[Congressional Record Volume 143, Number 74 (Tuesday, June 3, 1997)]
[House]
[Pages H3215-H3216]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




          DEMOCRATS HAVE TAKEN LEAD ON CHILDREN'S HEALTH CARE

  Mr. PALLONE. Mr. Speaker, in the coming days, I am hopeful that a 
children's health care initiative will emerge as a result of the budget 
reconciliation process. It is my understanding that approximately $16 
billion over 5 years has been set aside in the budget to provide money 
to help families obtain health coverage for their children.
  Since last year, Mr. Speaker, when the Democrats developed the 
Families First agenda, children's health care has been a high priority. 
Although Republicans have failed to realize that 10 million uninsured 
children in this country is a problem that needs to be addressed, I 
have to assure my colleagues that Democrats have not let the needs of 
these children fall on deaf ears. As one of the three cochairs of the 
Democratic Health Care Task Force, we have held hearings and meetings 
with child advocacy groups and various health care providers who have 
all been very clear in expressing the need for Federal involvement in 
this issue.
  Two months ago, I and a number of my colleagues on the Democratic 
side sent a letter urging that the Republican leaders move legislation 
forward by Mother's Day that would benefit the uninsured children. 
Since then, the GOP has really done nothing about the issue while each 
day more children enter the ranks of the uninsured.
  Just as an example, Mr. Speaker, in my home State of New Jersey, over 
200,000 children are currently without health insurance, according to a 
very good estimate. That many children should not be without health 
insurance in this Nation if we think about what it means nationwide. 
Many do not realize that over 90 percent of all uninsured children are 
in working families whose employer does not offer health insurance or 
who just cannot because the family or the policy that the employer 
provides, they just cannot afford to pay the skyrocketing costs.
  I have to say, Mr. Speaker, that Democrats understand these 
statistics and the Democratic Health Care Task Force has developed a 
proposal to address the problem of uninsured kids. Our task force plan 
would strengthen Medicaid, create a new flexible matching grant program 
for working families and enact important health insurance reforms. And 
this proposal, the Democratic Health Care Task Force proposal, can be 
considered now that Republicans are being forced to address this issue 
as a result of the $16 billion set aside for children's health care 
under the balanced budget resolution.
  Of the 10 million uninsured children, approximately 3 million are 
already eligible for Medicaid. But what we do in our plan is provide 
grants to States to help local communities in developing outreach 
programs to take these 3 million children out of the ranks of 
uninsured, with maximum flexibility to employee communities resources. 
So first, what we are doing is to try to get to the kids that already 
are eligible for Medicaid but for whatever reason are not signed up.
  In addition, our Democratic plan will enable children to remain 
eligible for Medicaid for a full year from the time they are determined 
eligible. At present, the status is evaluated many times in a given 
year, oftentimes leading to children having health care insurance one 
month but not another. This change will offer continuity and allow 
parents to be more at ease with the guarantee that their child will not 
lose health care coverage from one month to the next.
  The Democratic plan creates Medikids, which is a new matching grant 
program that will provide States with the necessary resources to seek 
innovative State solutions to meet the needs of uninsured children in 
working families. States would be eligible for extra money if they 
expand Medicaid coverage to cover pregnant women up to 185 percent of 
the poverty level and all children through the age of 18 in families 
below 100 percent of the poverty level. Just to give an example, Mr. 
Speaker, my home State of New Jersey already covers pregnant women up 
to 185 percent of the poverty level, but they only cover children up to 
the age of 13. So if they expand that to 18, they then will not only 
have an expanded Medicaid Program, but they would be able to take 
advantage of the new

[[Page H3216]]

Medikids matching grant programs to expand health insurance even beyond 
Medicaid to a lot more working families.
  Under this grant program or Medikids Program, States may provide 
assistance on a sliding scale, and they have flexibility to determine 
the level of assistance. They could use the money, the additional funds 
they get, to pay for programs already helping uninsured children in 
their State, but the benefits package must be comparable to what is 
offered under Medicaid. What we are trying to do is to basically get at 
children whose families have an income between 100 and 300 percent of 
poverty. So we are going beyond Medicaid to working families who still 
cannot afford health insurance for their kids but are making more than 
the poverty level.
  The last thing I wanted to mention, Mr. Speaker, is that we do have a 
component in our Democratic proposal for private health insurance 
reforms. This consists of requiring insurers to offer group-rated 
children-only policies thereby making--what we are essentially doing, 
Mr. Speaker, if I could summarize it, is we are trying to say that, if 
a group policy is offered, they have to offer kids-only insurance so 
that parents basically can say, maybe we cannot afford to buy insurance 
for the whole family but we can afford to buy it for kids.
  In summary, what we are doing is expanding Medicaid, granting more 
money to the States to go beyond Medicaid to cover more kids and making 
it possible for people who have group insurance to buy kids-only 
policies to cover kids in those categories. I think it will work to 
cover most if not all the 10 million uninsured children.

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