How Will States Implement Children’s Health Insurance Plans?

An Analysis of State Plans Submitted to the Health Care Financing Administration by March 1, 1998
In an effort to insure health coverage for millions more low-income children through the recently enacted Children’s Health Insurance Program, states have begun to submit plans for federal review. A NASHP analysis of the eighteen state plans submitted by March 1 (representing 55 percent of the nation’s low-income, uninsured children) reports the following trends:

• Half of the early applicants will rely on private programs or a combination of Medicaid and private programs; half will expand Medicaid alone.
• Half of the state plans will provide coverage to children in families at or above 200 percent of poverty; 1 state proposes family coverage.
• Most states (11 of the 18) will require cost-sharing through premiums or co-payments; seven states, all Medicaid expansions, have no cost sharing.
• To further prevent crowd out (the replacement of private coverage by the new public coverage offered by CHIP), 10 states will require that beneficiaries have been uninsured for a period of time.

1998.Mar_.states.implement.children.health.insurance.plan_.pdf

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