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Texas Has Enough Federal Funds To Keep CHIP Running Through The End Of March

Reynaldo Leal
Dr. Javier Saenz checks the ear of Viviana Escareno, 6, for infection. The young girl's mother, Claudia Escareño, has brought "Vivi" to Saenz's clinic since she was born."

Texas now has enough federal money to keep alive its health insurance program for more than 450,000 uninsured kids and pregnant women through the end of March, a state official said on Friday. 

That's true even though the Children's Health Insurance Program technically expired on Sept. 30 after Congress failed to renew funding. Carrie Williams, a spokeswoman for the state Health and Human Services Commission, said Texas can keep the program afloat thanks to $248 million in funding allocated through a short-term spending bill passed by Congress last month. 

The news, first reported by the Dallas Morning News, comes less than a month after Texas Health and Human Services Commission officials announced that the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services was giving the state $135 million to continue the program through February.

Williams said in her e-mail that the $135 million now won't be immediately needed because of the December spending bill. 

"If Congress does not fully reauthorize CHIP by [the end of March], Texas would pursue redistribution funding as it did previously with CMS," Williams said.

Under CHIP, the uninsured rate among children across the country has dropped from 15 percent in 1997 to 5 percent in 2015. The program also offers prenatal care to about 36,000 pregnant women in Texas. About 394,000 Texas children ineligible for Medicaid are covered under CHIP, and another 249,000 Texan children on Medicaid benefit from CHIP’s 92 percent matching rate. Together, Medicaid and CHIP cover about 45 percent of all children in the state.

"This is good news in the short term, but Congress needs to get moving on a clean, 5-year CHIP extension as soon as possible,"  said Anne Dunkelberg, associate director for the left-leaning Center for Public Policy Priorities, in an emailed statement. "The health of over 400,000 Texas kids depends on it,"

State officials submitted a request with the federal government on Nov. 16 for an extra $90 million to support CHIP in the state until February.

Disclosure: The Center for Public Policy Priorities has been a financial supporter of The Texas Tribune. A complete list of Tribune donors and sponsors is available here.

The Texas Tribune provided this story.

Marissa Evans reports on health and human service policy issues for the Tribune and has been in Austin since October 2016. Before the Tribune she reported for CQ Roll Call in D.C. where she covered state legislatures and health care issues. Her reporting has appeared in Civil Eats, NBC BLK, Cosmo for Latinas, Kaiser Health News, The Seattle Times, The Washington Post, The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, The Star Tribune and Milwaukee Neighborhood News Service. She is a 2013 alumna of Marquette University in Milwaukee. When not reporting, she is teaching herself how to code, re-perfecting her chocolate chip cookie recipe, searching for food spots that rival her mother’s cooking, exploring museums, catching up on books and watching documentaries.