14 states beef up kids' healthcare

WASHINGTON, Aug. 5 (UPI) -- Fourteen U.S. states each will use $33 million allocated by Congress when it reinstated the Children's Health Insurance Program, officials said Wednesday.

Stateline.org reported Alabama, Arkansas, Colorado, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Montana, Nebraska, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Oregon, Rhode Island, Washington and West Virginia opted to increase health coverage for about 250,000 children in the midst of most states' worst financial crisis since the Great Depression.

Simultaneously, President Barack Obama withdrew a Bush Administration directive that curtailed states' expansion of coverage for children whose families had too little income to purchase their own health plans, but too little to qualify for Medicaid.

Jennifer Tolbert, a policy analyst at the Kaiser Commission on Medicaid and the Uninsured, said, "It is reassuring that states recognize the value of providing healthcare to children, perhaps especially during an economic downturn."

States pay only pay 30 percent of the money spent in the program; the federal government foots the rest, the report said. States, by comparison, pay an average of 43 per cent of the amount spent on Medicaid, a joint state-federal program that covers low-income persons.