Nevada is asking the federal government for $11.3 million to continue the state's Children's Health Insurance Program while Congress decides if it will renew funding for the decades-old program.
State Health and Human Services spokeswoman Chrystal Main tells the Las Vegas Review-Journal the request to the CMS would keep the Nevada Check Up program running through February.
Without it, she says the state will run out of funding by the end of the year, and families would need to find other health coverage.
Congress missed a Sept. 30 deadline to reauthorize the program, which covers more than 27,500 Nevada children whose low-income families make too much to qualify for Medicaid.
The House on Nov. 3 voted 242-174 to reauthorize federal funding to maintain low-cost health insurance to 8.9 million children and 370,000 pregnant women.
The Healthy Kids Act extends CHIP's federal funding for five years and funding for federally qualified health centers for two years.
The CHIP funding bill now goes to the Senate, which had its own version of a bill. However, its version does not suggest an offset to fund the program or the continuation of health center funding.
The Senate version does echo the House CHIP bill in one way. It eliminates an ACA provision that enhanced federal allotments for the program by 23%, with states receiving matching levels ranging from 88% to 100%. The matching funds would continue through fiscal 2019, fall to 11.5% in fiscal 2020 and be eliminated entirely in fiscal 2021. Both bills would allocate $21 billion to $25 billion annually through fiscal 2022 to CHIP.
