The SCHIP program was established to cover targeted low-income children. A targeted low-income child is defined as one who is under the age of 19 with no health insurance, whose family makes too much money to qualify them for Medicaid, but not enough to be able to afford health insurance.

Under H.R. 2, the Children's Health Insurance Program Reauthorization Act of 2009, the state of New York will be allowed to cover children from families with incomes up to 400% of the federal poverty line or $88,200 for a family of four.

In addition, a state can exclude as much as $40,000 worth of additional income when determining eligibility to participate in SCHIP. As a result, in New York, a family of four making $128,000 per year could receive health care.

"In the last SCHIP bill, we closed this loophole," Senator Roberts said, "We put a hard cap on income at 300 percent of poverty- still higher than some would like, but a compromise that I thought was worth the extra coverage for Kansas kids. In addition, we blocked the ability of states to exclude income. The current bill reverses that policy.

"How can I explain this to my Kansas families making $40,000 per year? What does this say about our priorities? We just considered an $825 billion economic stimulus bill in the Finance Committee. Now we are talking about an additional $33 billion to provide health insurance to kids from families with incomes close to $130,000. It just doesn’t make any sense.

Senator Roberts’ amendment would prevent any state from receiving federal SCHIP funds to cover kids from families with incomes which are the lower of $65,000, or the state median income for a family of four.

Kansas’ SCHIP program, called "HealthWave" covers children under the age of 19 whose families’ incomes are up to 200% of the federal poverty line or $44,000 per year for a family of four. In 2007, the program covered nearly 40,000 children through HealthWave. However, an estimated 32,000 low-income kids remained uninsured.

Senator Roberts, a member of the Finance Committee which has jurisdiction of the bill, and a member of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, supported the bipartisan compromise bill, "SCHIP 2" in the last Congress.

"I supported that bill because Kansas and other states need to have the necessary resources to reach their low-income children and provide them the health care coverage they need," Roberts said. "I still believe that SCHIP is a program that is worth keeping and worth expending some political and financial capital to improve. For that reason, I have offered an amendment that would at least prioritize that capital to target the kids that really need it."

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