Republicans about to let 9 million kids lose health insurance

It’s like every day brings a new demonstration of how evil and incompetent Congressional Republicans are. Their months-long crusade to repeal Obamacare at any cost has now put millions of children on the verge of losing their healthcare coverage:

On September 30, funding for the Children's Health Insurance Program expires. After Republicans took a rushed and ultimately failed run at repealing Obamacare one last time, the program’s spending authorization is now at imminent risk of lapsing.

[…]

CHIP is a health insurance program created in the 1990s to piggyback on Medicaid and it provides coverage for kids in families with higher, though still lower-middle-class to middle-class, incomes. The program also helps cover pregnant women in some states. It is designed much like Medicaid, with states and the federal government both paying a share of its budget.

About 9 million children across the country get coverage through CHIP, and it costs about $14 billion a year (the feds pick up about three-quarters of that bill). It is a smaller program than Medicaid and Medicare, but it is still a big reason why America has nearly eliminated uninsurance among kids.

States and organizations are scrambling to prepare for the sudden funding shortfall. Meanwhile, a preliminary CHIP renewal deal already exists, but thanks to their latest Obamacare-repeal attempt, the Republican-led Congress now has two days to take it up and pass it, so it’s virtually guaranteed to get left behind.

Then again, perhaps this shouldn’t be too surprising. Republicans clearly have no issue with leaving millions of American adults without health insurance, since that’s precisely what they’ve tried to do over half a dozen times. Why would they treat kids any differently? Judging by their actions, they’d probably consider it a compromise.

(via @fark)