Yesterday, health care advocates nationwide celebrated a major victory for our movement. President Obama signed the Children's Health Insurance Program (CHIP) into law. President Obama characterized the bill as a "down payment" on winning quality, affordable health care for all Americans, not just our children:
"[This] bill is only a first step. The way I see it, providing coverage to 11 million children through CHIP is a down payment on my commitment to cover every single American. And it is just one component of a much broader effort to finally bring our health care system into the twenty-first century. That's where the Economic Recovery and Reinvestment Plan that is now before Congress comes in."Think about this - if Congress passes this recovery plan, in just one month, we'll have done more to modernize our health care system than we've done in the past decade."
The AP provides some great highlights of the legislation:
- Continues coverage through 2013 for 7 million lower income children.
- Expands coverage for another 4.1 million uninsured children.
- Requires states to offer a dental benefit.
- Allows states to offer SCHIP dental coverage to children whose private medical insurance does not cover dentist visits.
- Allows states to extend SCHIP and Medicaid to newly arrived legal immigrant children and pregnant women.
