Time's up: As CHIP expires unrenewed, Congress blows a chance to save healthcare for 9 million children
latimes.com/business/hiltzik/la-fi-hiltzik-ch...Posted Oct 1, 2017, 1:12 PM UTC
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latimes.com
Hi, I'm someone who is personally affected by this. I'm 18 but covered under CHIP because my parents are $80 over the bracket for medical assistance, but that $80 doesn't cover my $10,000 a month medical bills to help treat my lung disorder. I can't breathe without any of my medications and when I'm off of these medications, my lungs begin to slowly deteroriate and the damage is irreversible. This is going to kill people, and I know there are people worse off than me that are going to be affected by this. Please fight against this!
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Please, please look into patient assistance from pharmaceutical companies now to avoid a lapse if this isn't remedied before benefits expire for you. Look into community pharmacies, vouchers, coupons, and charities. Talk to your local health department, hospital, your PCP, your pharmacist, any of whom may be aware of programs to assist you in your area. Hopefully this is addressed, hopefully this garners the attention it deserves and all people come together to demand better from those who claim to represent the majority, but just in case, I'd feel better knowing you are looking into a backup plan before it becomes a crisis for you.
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I also have trouble affording my meds and I can tell you unless the doctor has samples you're pretty much SOL. Big Pharma will only give coupons for 20% off or $10 off. The financial assistance they promote in commercials is crap.
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Yeah, unfortunately I'm in the same boat as the person who commented below. The insurance has dropped me below and the 'help' that is offered doesn't really do much than $100 or so. I am trying to get new insurance now
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What medication?
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Please don't encourage, rule #2 violations.
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I'm on a boat load of medicines there isn't just one.
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Removed under rule #5.
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He was probably being sarcastic Edit: ok i just checked his post history, the guy is a fucking moron.
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I'm pretty sure he/she was sarcastic.
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It is a shame that such an important program that had bipartisan support since its inception is now going through this. In my state, it served as a bridge to cover those kids whose parents made just above the cut off for Medicaid. Many pregnant women were also covered by CHIP.
Projected Exhaustion of Federal CHIP Funds in Fiscal Year 2018
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October–December 2017 Arizona, District of Columbia, Minnesota, and North Carolina
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January–March 2018 Alaska, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Florida, Hawaii, Idaho, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Massachusetts, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nevada, New York, Ohio, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Dakota, Utah, Vermont, Virginia, and Washington
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April–June 2018 Alabama, Georgia, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Maine, Michigan, Maryland, Nebraska, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, West Virginia, and Wisconsin
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July–September 2018 Wyoming
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For more info, see this snazzy report by KFF: https://www.kff.org/medicaid/fact-sheet/current-status-of-state-planning-for-the-future-of-chip/
TL;DR -Nearly all (48 of 50) responding states (including DC) assumed continuation of federal CHIP funding in their FY 2018 state budgets.
-Because states have assumed continued federal funding in their state budgets, the majority of states will face a funding shortfall if Congress does not extend federal funding.
-Of the 42 states (including DC) that provided an estimate of when they will run out of their FY 2017 CHIP allotment, 10 anticipate exhausting funding by the end of 2017.
-Although the majority of states have not yet developed plans for actions they will take if Congress does not extend funding, some plan to close or cap enrollment and/or discontinue coverage for children in separate CHIP programs.
-Reductions in CHIP coverage will result in coverage losses for children and negative effects on children’s health and family finances.
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We need single payer. This is rapidly becoming our greatest domestic shame.
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Job security for health care lobbyists like me for ever!!!
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Removed under rule #5.
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S. 1827 KIDS Act of 2017 "To extend funding for the Children's Health Insurance Program, and for other purposes." Introduced 9/18/17
Call/e-mail your senators' offices and let them know this funding is important to you and the families you care for. https://www.congress.gov/bill/115th-congress/senate-bill/1827/text
Don't know what to say? Start here. https://downloads.aap.org/DOFA/CHIP%20Advocacy%20toolkit%20September%202017.pdf
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Why is insurance the issue and not the actual cost of healthcare. It seems to me the issue is not with making sure the insurance companies make money while providing care. The real issue is how much it costs and the education cost of the medical professionals and the liability cost they have to insure against. I know it's all about money but insurance needs to not be mandatory. If it was reasonable we would need general care insurance. I haven't had insurance since I was 18 because these issues yet me being young and able I'm expected to pay for my elders and their degradation of American economics. My main point is an aspirin shouldn't cost 75 dollars and a nurse shouldn't charge a doctor's rate.
Just my opinion thanks,
"Freedom"
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You're not paying for someone else's healthcare. You're paying for your own. You get the exact same quality of care as someone who is old if either of you gets cancer.
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Do you think you'll be young forever? You pay a little more now than if only young people were pooled together but you'd pay a lot more as an old person who is not pooled with the general population. ACA regulations pool everyone together and insurance is relatively affordable for people of any age.
Insurance need not be Mandatory
- Some "conservatives" say that they would be willing to accept death from not buying insurance rather than being forced to buy into it. Of course this is completely unprovable since hospitals are obligated to treat people in the emergency room. It is common sense that a person will do their best to live even if it's someone else footing the bill.
You are mandated to pay for car insurance to drive a car. You are now mandated to buy health insurance in America if you want to live and are subsidized by the government if you can't afford it. If you are completely able to afford it, you qualify for medicaid.
There are literally millions of things that are more important to consider in life than the fact that you have to buy affordable health insurance to pay for yourself if you get sick (which comes to us all).
Sincerely,
"Logic and Reason"
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If car insurance was like health insurance you'd have to get pre-approved to get an oil change. Gas would be 5 times as expensive and you'd have to fill out 8 pages of paperwork to refill the washer fluid.
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You're expected to pay for your elders in the same way you will expect others to pay for you when you get sick. Of all the things to use an insurance and dispersement of risk strategy, healthcare is it. Sickness and old age come for us all eventually.
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deleted ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^0.6026 ^^^What ^^^is ^^^this?
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"Social pressure" for people to be DNR to save money?
Are you kidding me?
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Are you aware that you're not immortal?
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We have a freelance editor who we hire sometimes who was saying the same thing as you. Not 2 weeks later he got a mystery eye infection. Docs couldn't figure it out. Bills piled up and it got worse so he couldn't work.
He's still paying off the debt he racked up at that time. Good thing he didn't have a family to support.
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Your opinion that your "Freedom" means you shouldn't have to have insurance is wrong.
How about this, since you need insurance to drive a car (because of the massive costs associated with cars and people's inability to pay them), you should need insurance to receive healthcare. Any healthcare. Broke your arm? Hope it heals ok. Car accident and major injuries? Well you had a good life while healthy and weren't burdened with old sick peoples healthcare costs. So I guess you can die at peace with yourself.
Education reform will not fix things anytime soon so bitching about it and pointing fingers is just deflecting. Unless you want to forgive all those med school and nursing school loans right now, even if it did happen all those people will still have their debt.
People who cannot pay make healthcare cost more.
Insurance: protects people from unexpected costs that are above their ability to pay.
NOT insurance: paying into a personal account so that you will be covered only by your own contributions in the event of some unexpected event (that's called a bank account. If you think buying a car is expensive and wipes out your finances every few years, try having some chronic illness that you pay for every month)
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YOU do not pay for old people's healthcare. The INSURANCE COMPANY pays for their care.
YOU pay the insurance company for the coverage of YOUR care.
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Almost 0 actually sick persons are capable of paying for their own care, (including essentially the entire elderly population). Therefore insurance companies bear that cost. If you don't think people should pay while they're still young and healthy, then the only people paying will be those who needed coverage beyond their capacity. If you don't want to pay for the healthcare of others as a healthy person, you are necessarily saying you don't think insurance companies should be able to profit off of healthcare. If this is the case, the 'insurance companies as free-market entities' case crumbles to bits.
There is no solution where premiums go down and people have coverage and the insurance companies are solvent and healthy people don't also pay.
Remember that "death spiral" people keep talking about? Where premiums skyrocket and no one can afford healthcare? It'd be the direct result of people with your beliefs getting their way.
And please. Do not confuse the current scenario with the death spiral. Expensive flawed healthcare coverage does not equal "death spiral".
Don't like where current things are headed? Good. No one does. Have a solution that doesn't involve massive loss of coverage for non-wealthypeople (read: people who don't have access to significant disposable income)? We'd love to hear it. The Rs got elected on a promise of that very thing and their offerings thus far have been hot garbage that don't hold up to the slightest scrutiny.
Meanwhile, elsewhere in the world, those "socialist countries" have functional systems, cheaper than our own. When someone comes up with a good reason not to go in that direction, founded on reality not some shitty abstract concept of selfish individualism and "freedom", I'd love to hear it.
"Government makes everything worse" is the biggest crock of shit that was ever sold. For sure it has its inefficiencies, but if you think the current setup isn't inefficient, I've got some land to sell you on the Moon.
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deleted ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^0.1087 ^^^What ^^^is ^^^this?
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A. Nothing I said has anything to do with physician compensation.
B. Just because they are the philosophical foundations of the country doesn't mean that they are inspiring the correct course of action.
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Doctor compensation only accounts for about 8% of what we spend on healthcare.
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8% is a lot. I think their point was that insurance companies aren’t the only ones profiting off of the American healthcare industry. There are also hospitals, medical malpractice lawyers, pharmaceutical companies, biomedical device manufacturers, and universities. There are millions of people profiting off the inefficiency of our healthcare system and that includes doctors. If we only go after the insurance companies, it seems unlikely that healthcare costs would come down much.
The fact that doctors only make up 8% of the cost isn’t inconsequential, especially when you consider that American doctors make more than almost any other country’s doctors. The only countries that pay better are the Netherlands and Australia. I think if you're a doctor, you can probably expect your wages to stagnate under a single payer system since there will be incredible pressure from taxpayers to lower costs.
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The point is, you're not going to bring down costs significantly by cutting physician compensation. You could cut doctor pay by half and only bring down the total cost of healthcare by 4%, while at the same time destroying healthcare in the US.
The point is that people need to know this, and know cutting physician compensation is not a panacea that will fix the whole system. People want to go after what to them is the most visible part of the system, but that's not where the money is.
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You gotta cut something. The overwhelming majority of money spent on healthcare goes toward wages of people in the healthcare industry. That includes doctors, hospital administrators, insurance claim adjusters, lawyers, educators and researchers. No one wants a pay cut and certainly no one wants to lose their job but it is actually impossible to lower healthcare costs without someone taking a hit. If doctors got their pay cut by half, and hospital administrators got their pay cut by half, and millions of people were fired from the insurance industry and big pharma, then we would be approaching something more like the healthcare industries of western Europe.
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If we lower doctors wages are we going to attract enough people into med school?
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Med school is part of the problem. It has to be much cheaper and you shouldn't have to waste 4 years on an irrelevant BA or BS before going into med school.
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If insurance was mandatory then the cost of health care will become cheaper.
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Insurance drives up the cost too. They're double dipping, screwing over their customers and the health providers. The biggest primary drivers of the extortion are the hospital networks, the medical device industry, the pharmaceutical industry, and the insurance industry, and they're raking in the billions for it.
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What does "a nurse shouldn't charge a doctor's rate" even mean?
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You're absolutely correct. The downvotes let you know you're on the right track.
Cost of healthcare is the central issue. If care were cheaper, we could treat the entire country for a few billion dollars. Right now, because nobody pays for their own healthcare, costs are outrageous.
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"All these healthcare professionals who disagree with me are definitely, objectively wrong! I'm the only enlightened one here!"
Also, "a few billion dollars." Yeah, if healthcare were SIGNIFICANTLY cheaper, we could treat everyone for $3.50. You're just randomly making stuff up
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A little column A, a little column B, and a little column C.
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Wow you're getting down-voted for voicing an opinion, and an opinion that essentially says "the problems with our healthcare system goes much deeper than insurance coverage."
Albeit you're voicing your unpopular opinion in a thread about a sensitive topic, and stating it in an insensitive manner. Still, it wouldn't be such a bad thing to discuss in a civil manner that insurance == access to care, or that there are a myriad of unnecessary factors contributing to the overwhelming cost of healthcare in our country (administrative, educational, pharmaceutical) that also need to be dealt with before we all get the perfect ideal healthcare system we all want.
I think part of what Mr Frok was trying to ineloquently say is, "Why, instead of trying to find funds for great programs like CHIP by forcing citizens to pay into this corrupt, inefficient system, don't we instead try to fix some of the systemic problems that would free up funds without impinging on our individual liberties?"
Although honestly probably better saved for a different thread.
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Wow you're getting down-voted for voicing an opinion
He's probably being downvoted for being offensive and arrogant.
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Nope. Meddit is intolerant of differing opinions. I know.
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Useless rhetoric. It doesn't work.
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This is HUGE. I am personally affected and kids are going to literally start dying because of this.
people will die!
I don’t think children dying is particularly funny but maybe I just don’t understand American humour
I definitely agree with your point here, but that video is more poking fun at the different parties using rhetoric to vilify the other party and don't use reason to think about issues. Republicans like to paint democrats as promoting a nanny state and restricting freedom (which certainly has merits in some cases), and democrats like to paint republicans as racist, greedy individuals (which is even more merit-worthy).
No, the video was produced by a libertarian think tank that genuinely believes that the government shouldn't be involved in health care, regardless of consequences. Some of them are even opposed to the existence of the FDA.
deleted ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^0.4104 ^^^What ^^^is ^^^this?
The libertarians at Reason are anti-government fetishists who want to shrink government regardless of any and all consequences it might cause.
Makes the video a bit less funny.
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lmao that was amazing
I apologize for these evil forces in congress screwing with the lives of your kids.
Did you read the article? Funds don't run out for another year. I don't think anyone is literally dying right now
my son was just dropped from insurance and we have no idea why. we've been trying to get an answer but all the reasons they give do not apply to his situation. I would not be surprised if they are simply dropping people and hoping they won't fight. So far we're 2 weeks in with no insurance and still have no answers. my girls get health care at their school for now, but here in MN we're feeling it already.
Sorry to hear that. What does this have to do with CHIP?
his insurance was under CHIP
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No one is dying. Stop with the hysteria. There is still medicaid/medicare which most of the child patients I interact with are on. People are still getting care, the question is just which government entity that these kids qualify for will pay for it. This is an administrative issue not a care or clinical one.
You are missing the point of CHIP. It is a program in many states for the families that don't qualify for Medicaid. Lots of families who qualify for CHIP even pay premiums.