Key senators agree on kids' health plan

Source: Associated Press

Lawmakers in a key Senate committee brokered a bipartisan agreement Friday that they said would extend health insurance to an additional 3.3 million low-income children in the U.S.

The legislation would add $35 billion over the next five years to a program that subsidizes health coverage for families too poor to qualify for Medicaid but with incomes too low to afford insurance on their own. The increased funding would be paid for through a 61-cent increase in the federal excise tax on a pack of cigarettes.

Many of the details of the package were not available, but the lawmakers issued a joint press release Friday night announcing their agreement.

"The State Children's Health Insurance Program has helped millions upon millions of low-income, uninsured American kids see doctors when they're sick, and this agreement will make sure that even more children get the health care they need," said Max Baucus, D-Mont., chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, which will take up the measure next week.

Read more: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070714/ap_on_go_co/children_s_insurance_2

If we had universal health care, we wouldn't need crap little programs like this.

I really do hope that this helps some people, but I doubt it will do much,and it is no way enough.

--their goddam PARENTS can't afford health care?

to give all children under the age of 16 free health care ?

I'm all for CHIP--actually I'd just as soon abolish it and have national single payer for everybody--but that irritating signing ad ("If you're healthy and you know it clap your hands! If you're healthy and you know it clap your hands!...) just caused me to hit the mute button every commercial break.