[Congressional Record Volume 161, Number 17 (Monday, February 2, 2015)]
[Senate]
[Pages S686-S687]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                              CHIP FUNDING

  Mr. BROWN. Mr. President, 1 year and 1 week ago, on a cold, snowy 
morning in Cleveland, OH, not much different from what I woke up to 
this morning in Cleveland, OH, I attended the Dr. Martin Luther King 
Memorial Breakfast in that city, which is also my hometown. A minister 
at that breakfast said something that we all know but probably have not 
thought about and rarely put in such succinct, meaningful words. He 
said: Your life expectancy is connected to your ZIP Code. Think about 
that. Whether you grew up on the east side of Cleveland or Gary, IN, or 
whether you grew up in Appalachia, OH, or southern Indiana, or whether 
you grew up in a city, suburb, small town, affluent, less affluent, low 
income, rural, or urban, your ZIP Code often determines whether you 
have access to quality health care, to a good, solid education, and the 
social support that is necessary to succeed. It is up to this body to 
help ensure--not to do it and not to do it alone--that every ZIP Code 
is one that provides opportunity, not inequality.
  Ten years ago, the ZIP Code where my wife and I live in the city of 
Cleveland had the highest foreclosure rate of any ZIP Code in America. 
Think about what that means for a 12 year-old-child of a family where 
the father gets laid off from work and the mother has her hours cut 
back. Even though they were doing everything right, they can't pay 
their mortgage. They sit down with their 12-year-old daughter and say: 
Honey, we are going to have to move, but we don't know where we are 
going yet. We don't know what school district you are going to be in, 
and we don't know if you will be close enough to be able to stay with 
your friends.
  Those kinds of decisions happen far too often. Those kinds of 
scenarios happen far too often. But we know that in many ways we have 
made progress. Fifty years ago the poverty rate was 26 percent, and 
today it is around 15 percent thanks in large part to what people in 
this institution have done with social insurance programs, such as the 
Affordable Care Act, Medicaid, and today's Children's Health Insurance 
Program, so-called CHIP.
  There was no greater champion in the Senate for children's health 
care than my predecessor, the Senator from West Virginia who actually 
sat at this desk on the Senate floor, retired Senator Jay Rockefeller. 
He helped to write CHIP in 1997. I was a member of the House Health 
Subcommittee of the Energy and Commerce Committee at that time. I 
believe the Presiding Officer sat on that committee when he was in the 
House many years ago. We worked on writing CHIP in 1997 when it was a 
joint State-Federal health insurance program for low- to moderate-
income children and pregnant women.
  Keep in mind that in most cases the children who are in today's 
Children's Health Insurance Program have at least one working parent in 
their family. CHIP provides health insurance to low-income families who 
fall into a coverage gap: They make too much to qualify for Medicaid, 
but they don't make enough to qualify for private insurance. Many 
employers don't offer the insurance. They don't make enough money and 
are not able to afford to buy the insurance due to the high copays and 
the high premiums they would typically face. Today's CHIP, the current 
CHIP program, bridges that gap.
  I am honored to continue the fight to protect this program and ensure 
that Congress acts to extend funding for the current program before it 
expires at the end of September.
  You may have noticed that I said today's CHIP, the current program. 
When CHIP started in 1997, it was a good program. It was started in the 
Senate by Senator Rockefeller, Senator Kennedy, and Senator Hatch. It 
was very bipartisan, and it passed overwhelmingly. Those of us who 
worked on it in the House--Congressman Billirakis and I, as leaders on 
the Health Subcommittee, and others--made sure that it was bipartisan 
and that it worked very well. But understand that over the 20 years of 
CHIP, each time it has been reauthorized, we made it better. We 
extended the benefits because we have seen where the coverage gaps are. 
We made it more efficient, we made it work better, we have kept the 
bipartisan nature to it, and that is why I referred to it as today's 
CHIP, as the current program.
  Providing health insurance to low-income children is not just the 
right thing to do, it is the smart thing to do. It is the right thing 
to do because these are families where the parents are working hard and 
taking responsibility but simply can't afford health insurance for 
their child. Today I was in Cleveland with a couple of people--Shonte 
Saunders and her daughter Amari. Ms. Saunders is a young woman with two 
children. Amari is 9 years old. Ms. Saunders told me she is working, 
raising her children, and she is in school studying to become a nurse 
at Cuyahoga County Community College. She is doing the right thing, but 
she said: If CHIP expires, I don't want to be in the position where I 
have to choose between taking my daughter to a doctor for an ear 
infection versus having to provide enough food to put food on the 
table, or a more serious illness or injury than that.
  Why should she be subjected to that?
  Listen to these numbers. Thanks to CHIP, the number of uninsured 
children has fallen by half. It went from 14 percent almost 20 years 
ago when Senator Hatch, Senator Kennedy, and Senator Rockefeller wrote 
this program in the Senate and Congressman Billirakis and I and others 
in the House wrote it to a record low of 7 percent. Because of today's 
CHIP, 10 million children--130,000 children in my State of Ohio alone--
have access to health care they may not have received otherwise.
  Over the past week I met with parents across Ohio. I met with 
Jennifer Huit in Cincinnati and listened to her story. In Dayton, I 
listened to a family talk about what CHIP means to them.
  Think about this: It provides a sigh of relief for parents like 
Shonte and Jennifer, and not only for financial reasons. CHIP means 
better access for preventive and comprehensive care. Too often, if you 
are right on the edge and making $12 or $13 or less an hour and don't 
have Medicaid, think about the choices you know you have to make. You 
can't take your child to the doctor if they are only kind of sick. If 
you had insurance, you would take her in. But she is kind of sick, and 
it may get worse, but you will only take her in if it gets worse 
because you really can't afford those out-of-pocket expenses. Think of 
the tension and the difficult life that people generally have anyway at 
that income level. Think of how much more difficult that is. CHIP--
which in Ohio is administered

[[Page S687]]

through Medicaid--means that a child in Cleveland or Cincinnati or 
Gallipolis or Troy or Pickaway, OH, can see a family doctor when they 
need it, thereby preventing a costly ambulance ride and emergency room 
visit.
  CHIP means a bunch of things. It means vaccines, shots, dental 
coverage, and better treatment if kids get sick. Think about this: It 
is not just the health care. It means they do better in school. It 
means they miss fewer days in school so they don't fall behind their 
classmates who perhaps have better health insurance. It means they 
perform better in school because they feel better. We know the stories 
of how a hungry or sick child can't focus on what they need to do in 
the classroom. CHIP means that children from Bowling Green will get the 
health care they need to become healthy, active adults.
  We know that the current CHIP--today's 2015 version of CHIP--works 
not just because of the number of insured children under the program 
but because of the flexibility it provides States and the quality of 
care children receive.
  Ohio's conservative Republican Governor supports CHIP. It is called 
Healthy Start in Ohio because the Governor and legislature have been 
given flexibility under CHIP to make it work for that State.
  The flexibility that CHIP provides States is the result of 20 years 
of watching, observing, quantifying, and analyzing CHIP. We have had 18 
years of experience in seeing what works best, and we have worked 
together to make improvements. As a result, under the current CHIP 
program, more children are covered and the coverage they get is better.
  If we don't act, understand that CHIP--the authorization, the 
language, the law governing CHIP is in effect until 2019, but the 
funding for CHIP runs out in September of this year. You have to have 
both. You have to have the law governing CHIP--how it works, who is 
eligible, how the States have flexibility--but obviously you also need 
the money to implement it.
  If Congress doesn't act now, first of all, Ohio, my State, would lose 
$146 million in Federal funds in 2016 alone, and the Presiding 
Officer's State of Indiana would lose tens of millions of dollars in 
CHIP funding.
  We know another thing: Whether it is Governor Pence in Indiana or 
Governor Kasich in my State, they need the flexibility of knowing what 
Congress is actually going to do. We should not wait until July or 
August; we should reallocate money for CHIP today. If we don't act, 
parents like Shonte and Jennifer may not be able to get the quality, 
affordable care for their children as States would start to roll back 
CHIP programs.
  That is why I will soon introduce legislation to protect the program 
and extend its funding so it runs out at the same time as the 
authorization--the roadmap, if you will, of how CHIP will work. If we 
let the program run out of funding, the number of uninsured children 
will increase, the quality of health care will decrease, and States 
will see a significant increase in cost-sharing services.

  Providing health insurance to low-income children isn't just the 
right thing to do, it is the smart thing to do. If the program works, 
it works for children, it works for parents, it works for communities, 
and it works for our great country.
  I call on my colleagues to work with me to extend funding for the 
current CHIP program before it is too late.
  Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. KAINE. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for 
the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

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