WASHINGTON, DC – At a hearing of the Senate Committee on Finance, Senator Roberts today urged his colleagues to renew funding for a critical federal program for states to provide health insurance for children in need. The program, the State Children’s Health Insurance Program (SCHIP), needs to be reauthorized before the current authorization expires on September 30, 2007.

"Here in Washington, we often talk about the programs that directly affect our constituents back home. SCHIP is truly one of these programs. It is a critical tool for our hardworking families who would otherwise struggle to provide health care for their children. Renewing this program is a top priority of mine for the 110^th Congress."

SCHIP is a federal-state match program, which provides health coverage for low-income children. Since its inception, the SCHIP program has contributed to a one-third decline in the uninsured rate of low-income children. Today, over six million children benefit from this program nationwide. Kansas’ SCHIP program, known as HealthWave, helps nearly 35,000 Kansas children.

A focus of the hearing was projected SCHIP funding shortfalls. If this issue is not addressed, many current SCHIP beneficiaries will lose their health care and a large and growing number of states will face substantial federal funding shortfalls. It is estimated that by 2012, more than 33 states will be affected by lack of funds. It is estimated that Kansas could face a $6.6 million shortfall in 2008.

To address this issue and examine ways the SCHIP program can help more children, Senator Roberts, in December, joined nine other Senators in sending a letter to President Bush asking him to make SCHIP a priority in his 2008 budget proposal.

"In order to grow the success of the SCHIP program, it is essential that the President’s budget provide additional funding," Roberts said. "We urged the President to ensure that his budget proposal provides enough federal funding to not only allow states to maintain their existing SCHIP caseloads, but also to allow states to expand their programs to cover more children."

In looking at ways to update and improve the program, Senator Roberts noted the results of two pilot programs in Kansas. The first examined ways to expand the program to children not currently enrolled, but who may fit the criteria for the Kansas HealthWave program. At three sites, health care providers who cared for a presumptively eligible child were reimbursed for medical services provided at the Medicaid reimbursement rate, instead of having to provide uncompensated care. Over the first six months, 650 kids were enrolled in either Medicaid or SCHIP as a result of presumptive eligibility.

"This is an innovative project and has been a good learning experience for our program in Kansas. Health care providers are certainly an important partner in identifying and getting young people the care they need, but results from the project suggest the need for additional training of these providers, monitoring and program improvement before the program can be expanded statewide," Roberts said. "With my role on the Senate Finance Committee, I want to examine ways the federal government can help with this effort."

The second Kansas project mentioned by Roberts was the Community Health Record (CHR) pilot program, which seeks to improve the cost effectiveness and quality of care. The CHR is a web-based, secure application using clinical and claims health information. The CHR allows authorized providers online access to more than 12 months of data regarding a person’s office visits, hospitalizations, medications, immunizations, and lead screening data. Clinicians can document allergies and screening information, and work is underway to incorporate lab results into the health record. Currently, this project reaches 14,000 individuals in the Medicaid and Health Wave managed care population of Sedgwick County.

Roberts said, "Simply put, the CHR gives providers a one-stop point of access for information on their patients. This is a big step forward for improving the quality of care for Kansans. It is a model for efficiency that is something I hope other states can adopt."

Senator Roberts is a member of the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions and the Senate Committee on Finance.