What is SCHIP?

The State Children’s Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) was enacted by Congress in 1997 to increase health insurance coverage for low-income children. At the time, more than 10 million children lacked health insurance.

About 7 million of them lived in families with incomes below twice the federal poverty level (today, that would be $33,200 for a family of three). Although 75 percent of those uninsured children lived in a family with at least one parent who worked full-time, and 90 percent had a parent who worked either full or part-time, their families either were not offered job-based health insurance or could not afford to buy the insurance that was offered.

The SCHIP program gave states a total of $40 billion over 10 years to provide health coverage for these children, who lived in families that earned too much to qualify for Medicaid, but not enough to afford private insurance.

Children's Health Coverage at Risk
The SCHIP program will expire in 2007 unless it is reauthorized by Congress. Reauthorization provides an opportunity to review how SCHIP works, examine what has been learned about children’s health coverage in the last 10 years, and discuss what Congress must do to continue the progress made in reducing the number of uninsured children.

According to a February 2007 study by Families USA, uninsured children admitted to a hospital due to injuries were twice as likely to die while in the hospital as their insured counterparts.

Read more about SCHIP (pdf).