Passage of SCHIP Medicare Extension Bill Important Step for Health Care Access

WASHINGTON—U.S. Sen. John Cornyn made the following statement Tuesday regarding unanimous Senate passage of the Medicare Medicaid and SCHIP Extension Act of 2007:

“This important legislation ensures that Texas will have the funds necessary to meet current and future needs of the State Children’s Health Insurance Program. Last week I urged congressional leaders to pass an extension that would provide the necessary resources to cover low-income children in Texas. It’s encouraging to see they have done just that.

“While this extension is good news an SCHIP reauthorization and expansion I voted for earlier this year would have allocated additional funding for outreach and enrollment to cover children eligible but not yet enrolled. I will continue working in the Senate to get this done and working with state officials to find ways to ease this process.

“In addition I was glad to support the effort to pass legislation preventing physicians’ Medicare payment cuts. These cuts would have decreased access to health care for many Texas seniors. Congress needs to work in an open and deliberative process to develop a permanent fix to the broken physician payment system so these harmful cuts don’t resurface.”

BACKGROUND:
Under the Medicare Medicaid and SCHIP Extension Act SCHIP will be extended until March of 2009 with ample funding to prevent shortfalls. Texas’ $1 billion in unspent SCHIP funding will remain in place and future allotments will be calculated as expected. This is consistent with the letter Sen. Cornyn sent last week to the leaders of Senate Finance Committee.

This legislation also prevented a 10 percent cut to physician payments under Medicare that was scheduled to go into effect on January 1 2008.  Instead physicians will receive a 0.5 percent increase until July 1 2008.  Sen. Cornyn supported preventing these cuts because many physicians would have stopped seeing Medicare beneficiaries.  If Congress does not act before July physicians will once again be faced with a 10 percent cut.

--Below is the letter Sen. Cornyn sent to Finance Committee leaders urging that any extension of SCHIP would not withhold funds Texas relies upon for current and future needs of its program--

I strongly support responsible reauthorization and expansion of the State Children’s Health Insurance Program (SCHIP). I have voted this year to achieve that goal. Unfortunately it appears increasingly unlikely that Congress will pass a bill the President can sign into law by the end of the year. In the event Congress passes an extension rather than a reauthorization I support additional funding above the current baseline to allow states to cover the originally intended population of low-income children. However I strongly oppose any new policy that would jeopardize the funds Texas currently has or is expected to receive.

In the most recent legislative session the Texas State Legislature passed House Bill 109 addressing key enrollment and eligibility issues in the Texas SCHIP program. As a result SCHIP in Texas has substantially increased its enrollment which had previously dropped due to budget difficulties from a high of 529000 in May 2002 to a low of 291000 in September 2006. But since August of this year more than 40000 children have been enrolled in SCHIP. In addition the Texas Health and Human Services Commission expects this number to grow as outreach and enrollment efforts are increased.

If Congress were to enact a long-term extension with new policy that confiscates previously unused funds or alters the expected allocation these gains in states like Texas would likely be lost.

Thank you in advance for your careful consideration of this issue and for your continued support of the SCHIP program.

Sincerely

JOHN CORNYN
United States Senator