Spitzer threatens to sue federal govt over SCHIP.

Today in the New York Daily News, Gov. Eliot Spitzer (D) sharply criticizes the Bush administration’s cuts, which block the state’s plan to expand coverage “to children whose parents earn up to 400 percent of the federal poverty level, from 250 percent currently.” From his op-ed:

There are 400,000 uninsured children in New York. To put this in perspective, if they were to gather in one place, they would form the second-largest city in the state – larger than Rochester, Albany and Binghamton combined.

To deny coverage to these children is not only morally wrong, it is profoundly bad public policy. [...]

But then – last Friday – the federal Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, or CMS, at the behest of President Bush, slammed the door in the face of children and families across our nation.

Not only would CMS prevent states from increasing their income limits to bring more children into the program, CMS has actually proposed reducing the income limits many states already have, forcing children out of the program and into the ranks of the uninsured.

Yesterday, Spitzer also threatened to sue the federal government “on charges that new regulations on children’s health insurance violate an existing program that covers children from lower-income families.”