September 10, 2007
New York Is Told Not to Add SCHIP Children 

The state of New York, which had hoped to expand its State Children’s Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) to include children from families that earn 400 times the federal poverty level, was told by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid in the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Friday that new federal restrictions bar expansions of SCHIP eligibility beyond 250 percent of the federal poverty level. Specifically, New York was told that it cannot extend SCHIP to higher income levels because it does not currently enroll at least 95 percent of all children in the state who have family incomes below 200 percent of poverty. That is one of several new restrictions on SCHIP eligibility set by the Bush administration August 17 in a letter to state governors. Current law allows state to set their own SCHIP eligibility levels, and New York Governor Eliot Spitzer said Friday that the state is preparing a lawsuit challenging the new policy. New York is the first state to test the federal restrictions, which include a mandatory one-year waiting period before children who previously had private health insurance can enroll in SCHIP, regardless of the reason for the child’s loss of private coverage.