Many kids who left CHIP got other insurance

Associated Press



AUSTIN — Almost half of the Texas children who left the state's health insurance program as a result of budget cuts found coverage elsewhere, about a third of them through Medicaid, according to a survey the Health and Human Services Commission released Wednesday.



Lawmakers faced with a $10 billion budget shortfall in 2003 revised eligibility requirements for the Children's Health Insurance Program. The changes resulted in 171,508 children leaving the CHIP rolls.



According to the survey, 31 percent of the children who left the program were picked up by Medicaid, a federally mandated health program for the poor. Eleven percent were insured through their parent's employers, and another 5 percent obtained insurance from another source, such as the military.



The Institute for Child Health Policy at the University of Florida interviewed a sampling of 400 families that had children who left the Children's Health Insurance Program between January and March. During that period, about 28,000 children left the program, according to the commission.



The study's margin of error is plus or minus 4.6 percentage points, said Jennifer Harris, a spokeswoman for the commission.



Patti Everitt, executive director of the Children's Defense Fund of Texas, said more than half of the children who left CHIP are without insurance.



The report "confirms our concern that thousands of Texas children who have lost CHIP coverage remain uninsured without timely access to the health care they need," Everitt said.



CHIP covers children whose families cannot afford or don't have access to private insurance but aren't poor enough to qualify for Medicaid.