Children's Health Coverage: Medicaid, CHIP, and Next Steps
November 13, 2009

Russell Senate Office Building - Washington, DC

Sponsoring Organization: Alliance For Health Reform; Robert Wood Johnson Foundation

Event starts: 12:15pm November 13, 2009
Event ends: 2:00pm November 13, 2009

The Alliance for Health Reform and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation are sponsoring a lunch briefing to discuss the factors involved in children's health coverage, the state of the Children's Health Insurance Program (CHIP), as well as the implications of the reform proposals currently under debate in Congress.

Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP) play a crucial role in the U.S. health insurance system by providing coverage for more than one in four children. The number of children in CHIP is at an all-time high, having grown 15 percent over the past year alone. About half of Medicaid’s enrollees are children. And yet, more than 8 million children remain uninsured today, 70 percent of whom are eligible for Medicaid or CHIP.

What factors influence children’s coverage? What are the trends in private sector coverage? How well are the enrollment simplification and outreach tools included in this year’s CHIP reauthorization helping reach those children who are eligible but unenrolled? How much does a child’s coverage depend on where he or she lives? How have states’ budget shortfalls affected children’s coverage? What is being proposed in the House and Senate reform bills that could affect children’s coverage in the future?

Panelists will be:

• Jocelyn Guyer of the Center for Children and Families at Georgetown University Health Policy Institute
• Nate Checketts, director of Utah’s CHIP program
• Stan Dorn of the Urban Institute
• Ed Howard of the Alliance will moderate

Event URL: http://www.allhealth.org/briefregemail.asp?regid=20026&ea=jackd@kff.org&briefid=171
Event Contact: info@allhealth.org