[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 153 (2007), Part 13]
[House]
[Pages 18782-18783]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                                 SCHIP

  (Mr. ENGEL asked and was given permission to address the House for 1 
minute and to revise and extend his remarks.)
  Mr. ENGEL. Mr. Speaker, in our Energy and Commerce Committee, we're 
pushing ahead to grant health care coverage to millions of children, a 
program called SCHIP. Unfortunately, the President's proposal to 
reauthorize SCHIP is woefully inadequate. His funding level won't even 
cover the children currently enrolled in the program. Nationwide, 6 
million children are covered by the SCHIP and another 9 million are 
uninsured. If there was ever a question of where our priorities are, it 
should be with strengthening and modernizing the SCHIP program.
  I've just come from a meeting with our Governor, Eliot Spitzer. New 
York operates a separate stand-alone program under SCHIP, Child Health 
Plus. As of December 2006, nearly 400,000 children were enrolled and 
receiving comprehensive health coverage in the program. Our stand-alone 
SCHIP program has increased enrollment by over a quarter of a million 
children since the start of the program.
  Nationwide, we have to remember that the SCHIP program is a critical 
part of our health care safety net, providing health coverage to more 
than 4 million low-income children who do not qualify for Medicaid. 
SCHIP has

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served New York and our country well, and I will continue to work to 
improve access for children's health care coverage.

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