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CCF Fact Sheet: $83,000 SCHIP Family Doesn’t Exist

The truth about who’s eligible for State Children’s Health Insurance Program coverage has become blurred in the debate to reauthorize SCHIP, with the mythical $83,000 SCHIP family making headlines. The misleading contention that SCHIP covers children at this income level leaves the false impression that SCHIP is a program that no longer focuses on lower income children or that SCHIP reauthorization would turn it into such a program.

The Georgetown University Center for Children and Families has released a fact sheet with new data on the income levels of the children participating in SCHIP.

Here are the facts about who’s enrolled in SCHIP:

• There currently are no children enrolled in SCHIP with family income of 400 percent of the federal poverty level ($83,000 for a family of four).
• More than nine in 10 children (91.3 percent) enrolled in SCHIP are from families with incomes below 200 percent of the federal poverty level ($41,300 for a family of four).
• More than 99.95 percent of the children in SCHIP have income below or at 300 percent of the federal poverty level ($62,000 for a family of four).
  

The SCHIP legislation, Children’s Health Insurance Program Reauthorization Act of 2007 (CHIPRA), approved by Congress but vetoed by the president would provide health coverage to nearly 4 million uninsured children — reducing the number of uninsured children by nearly a half. The vast majority (84 percent) of these children are from the lowest-income families who already are eligible for SCHIP or Medicaid. The bill would not increase states’ flexibility to expand coverage to families with more moderate incomes; in fact, CHIPRA would constrain that flexibility.

CCF’s fact sheet, Coverage of Uninsured Children in Moderate-Income Families Under SCHIP, and summary of the CHIPRA legislation are available online at http://ccf.georgetown.edu/.