WASHINGTON — House and Senate Democratic leaders are on the verge of a deal to expand the popular state-federal health insurance program for the children of working parents, setting up a major confrontation with President Bush, senior congressional aides said Friday.
At issue is the State Children's Health Insurance Program, a federal-state partnership that covers about 6 million children and will expire Sept. 30 unless Congress and the president agree to extend it. In California, the program is known as Healthy Families.
For The Record
Los Angeles Times Tuesday, September 18, 2007 Home Edition Main News Part A Page 2 National Desk 1 inches; 39 words Type of Material: Correction
Children's healthcare: A secondary headline on an article in Saturday's Section A said that a potential congressional accord would spend about $35 million more to expand children's health coverage. As the article said, the figure is about $35 billion.
Democratic aides said leaders in both chambers of Congress were nearing an agreement to spend about $35 billion more over five years, a level significantly below that approved by the House but close to the amount that cleared the Senate this summer by a vetoproof 68-31 vote. The new funding would expand the program to serve more children whose parents' incomes are well above the poverty line -- an enlargement that has drawn a veto threat from Bush, who wants the program's emphasis to remain on the poor.
The fate of the program is widely viewed as the most important healthcare decision facing Congress this year.
"There are still details being worked out, but there has been a realization in the House that the final bill needs to be closer to our bill," a Senate aide, who asked not to be identified because of the sensitivity of the negotiations, said Friday. "There is a new spirit of 'We've got to get this done,' -- $35 billion is the number everybody is zeroing in on."
House aides said that lawmakers in that chamber were moving closer to the Senate position but that some issues remained unresolved.
Washington contributes about $5 billion a year to the program, most of its cost. The House has passed an expansion of $50 billion over five years, and the Senate approved a lower figure of $35 billion. Bush has offered $5 billion more over five years, a figure that analysts say would not sustain the current caseload.
A central issue in the dispute between Congress and the administration is whether middle-class families with uninsured children should get help.
As the cost of coverage has risen, employers have trimmed healthcare benefits, leaving more middle-class families in a quandary. A study released Thursday found that nearly half the estimated 700,000 children added to the ranks of the uninsured last year were from families earning $40,000 to $80,000. About 9 million children in the United States are uninsured.
