Today, Govs. Arnold Schwarzenegger (R-CA) and Eliot Spitzer (D-NY) wrote a letter to President Bush, calling on him to reverse new rules instituted by his administration that deny thousands of children health care coverage:
California and New York cover more than 1.4 million children and pregnant women using State Children’s Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) funds — nearly one out of every four SCHIP recipients in the country. We have a long and productive relationship with CMS in leveraging SCHIP to innovatively provide maximum benefit with minimum resources.
We agree with your push for states to be a force for change in the delivery of health care to tens of millions of our fellow Americans who remain without meaningful coverage. But as you rally governors to do more to help fix our broken health care system, your administration has repeatedly modified existing Medicaid and SCHIP rules, harming states’ capacity to help you achieve our shared objectives.
The recently proposed SCHIP rules will reverse longstanding agreements with the states and reduce the number of children who receive health care. We strongly urge you to reconsider these recent policy changes, which simply diminish state flexibility.
Read the letter HERE.