Alabama announces freeze on children’s health program
By
Shelley Connor
21 December 2017
On Monday, Alabama parents whose children depend upon AllKids—the state’s Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP)—received devastating notices. The program would stop enrolling children as of January 1, 2018, the notice stated; furthermore, the entire program will be terminated on February 1 should Congress fail to earmark funding for CHIP.
Alabama was the first state to announce enrollment freezes and possible closure, but a total of 9 million children are threatened nationwide by the failure of Congress to provide new funding for the program for the fiscal year that began October 1. The program allows children in families with low or moderate incomes, who would not qualify for Medicaid, access to affordable medical care with low copays.
Currently, 84,000 children in Alabama stand to lose health coverage in February. Cathy Caldwell, the director of the AllKids program, told reporters on Monday that the program’s closure would have devastating effects on many families in Alabama. According to Caldwell, prior to the institution of CHIP in 1997, one in five Alabama children were uninsured. Today, the number is down to 2.4 percent.
Randi Carter is a mother of three children in Bessemer, Alabama, just outside of Birmingham. With a single income supporting her family, she and her husband have relied upon the ACA market place for insurance; their children received care through Medicaid. When her husband received a modest pay raise this year, she knew that the children would no longer qualify for Medicaid, but would be eligible for AllKids.
This was welcome news to Carter; although she had kept up with Congress’s dilatory treatment of federal CHIP funding, she was eager to…