House Gets Closer To Voting On SCHIP

Bush has called for increasing SCHIP funding by $5 billion over the next 5 years; the Senate, by $35 billion; and the House, by $50 billion.

Rep. Charles Rangel, D-N.Y., chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, says Medicare Advantage provisions and other provisions cut out of the SCHIP extension bill may go in a bill Rangel is drafting that would narrow the scope of the alternative minimum tax.

In related news, Sen. Max Baucus, D-Mont., chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, says the Bush administration changed an independent report commissioned by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services to make SCHIP seem more threatening than it really is to the private health insurance market.

"While the original final draft of the report said the substitution of private health coverage with CHIP coverage, or 'crowd-out', was 'not an issue', the final report with CMS-requested edits eliminates that phrase and instead emphasizes the fact that some 'crowd-out' does occur," Baucus says.

The independent researchers "apparently determined months ago that crowd-out has been so minor and so well-managed that it really isn't an issue in the administration of CHIP," Baucus says. "But it seems like CMS didn't want the full success of the Children's Health Insurance Program known – not to the Congress rewriting the CHIP law, and not to the American public."