How will health care reform affect children?

Last week, the United States Senate voted 60-40 to end debate on the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, the health care reform bill that Congress has been crafting through most of 2009.   Just before the Christmas holiday the Act was passed, and while heavy debate continues many individuals and organizations, such as Every Child Matters Education Fund urges Senators to support the.  The specifics on how the bill will affect children, include:

• Extend funding for the Children’s Health Insurance Program and the adoption tax credit to 2015
• Allow foster care children aging out of Medicaid to retain their comprehensive coverage
• Immediately ban denial of coverage for children based on pre-existing conditions
• Expand Medicaid eligibility to children in families from 100% of poverty to 133% of poverty, covering millions of children in this comprehensive program
• Establish a Pregnancy Assistance Fund assist teenaged mothers
• Allow children to stay on their parents’ health insurance until the age 26
• Add billions of dollars for community health centers, which will improve access and delivery of care for millions of children across this country
• Require coverage for basic pediatric services under all health plans as well as oral and vision coverage, which improves a child’s ability to learn and perform at school
• Improve the care our nation’s children receive through developing children’s quality priorities and promoting children’s quality measurement and reporting
• Ensure that all children have access to free preventive services under their health insurance plans and invest in prevention and public health to encourage innovations in health care that prevent illness and disease before they require more costly treatment
• Offer health insurance through an Exchange to families without job-based coverage, or are not eligible for government programs, and provide premium assistance to those who can’t afford it
• Ensure through a health insurance Exchange that children have access to affordable child-only health insurance policies, regardless of whether their parents change jobs, leave a job, move, or get sick

While the bill obviously imperfect, many, such as Every Child, hope it will allow the “SCHIP program funded through 2019 with a requirement that no children are worse off as they move to these untested exchanges, the benefits far outweigh any shortcoming in the bill which future Congresses will have the opportunity to correct.”  The State Children’s Health Insurance Program (SCHIP), also known as Children’s Health Insurance Program Reauthorization Act of 2009 (CHIPRA or Public Law 111-3), which was signed into law by President Barack Obama on February 4, 2009, and went into effect on April 1, 2009.