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The House, on an 87-55 vote, gave final approval to a CHIP buy-in bill that would let some families above current income caps pay to cover their children.
And hours earlier, lawmakers negotiating the state budget tentatively agreed to spend $40 million the state’s extra costs over two years if a buy-in bill passes.
CHIP covers children from low-income families who make too much to qualify for Medicaid but too little to afford private coverage.
“It’s proven to be one of the most popular programs that ever existed and that people say has the most value,” said Houston Democratic Rep. Garnet Coleman, the bill’s author.
The measure would tap federal matching money made available by a CHIP reauthorization law that President Barack Obama signed in February.
The Senate passed a similar measure last week, and Coleman and his Senate counterpart, Republican Kip Averitt of Waco, said they’re confident they can work out differences.
The House bill would let hundreds of families keep their children on CHIP as their incomes rise. Eligible families would have to pay the full cost, Averitt said. The senator said he believes he can persuade his chamber to accept the provision.
Both bills would make only a small dent in a big problem: Texas’ 1.5 million uninsured children.
Still, they will probably be the big victory for child advocates and health care providers pushing for broader children’s coverage in this legislative session.
Coleman said legislative leaders rejected a more costly proposal this week to expand Medicaid’s rolls by nearly 260,000 children. It would have let their families renew coverage annually instead of every six months.
Budget writers, though, balked at the $300 million, two-year cost, Coleman said, and he dropped the provision, along with a separate Democratic proposal to ease limits on how expensive a car some CHIP families can drive.
He and Rep. Wayne Christian, R-Center, clashed over whether the buy-in program would encourage parents to drop children’s coverage available through their work.
Currently, to qualify for CHIP, a family of four cannot earn more than $44,000. The bill would allow a family of four earning up to $66,000 to buy in by paying monthly premiums. Premiums would be based on a sliding scale pegged to income and defray about half of the state’s costs.
Christian, head of the Texas Conservative Coalition, said the bill would create a “socialized system.”
He noted that premiums, capped at 5 percent of a family’s net income, would be considerably less expensive than employer-provided dependent plans.
Coleman, though, said children who’ve had private coverage in the past six months would be ineligible. That and other rules would discourage parents and employers from trying to game the system, he said.
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