CHIP Announcements and Notification Letters

January 23, 2018 Update: With passage of a continuing resolution on January 22, Congress reauthorized funding for the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP) for six years through federal fiscal year 2023.

Since federal funding expired for CHIP, states have had to forecast when their existing funds might run out. State Health and Value Strategies (SHVS) hosted a webinar on state considerations for the future of CHIP in September, highlighting the steps that a state would need to take if CHIP was not re-authorized before a state ran out of funds. Among the first steps would be letters to enrollees warning of the loss of coverage. States that will deplete their funds soonest started to notify enrollees of the possibility of coverage loss. Others issued online statements and press releases about their planned course of action. And a bipartisan group of governors wrote a letter to the leadership of the House of Representatives and the Senate asking them to prioritize CHIP reauthorization.

Congress passed a short-term spending measure that funds the government through January 19, 2018 and contains a two quarter patch for the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP), funding the program from October 2017 through March 2018. Several states have released updates in light of the patch funding in the continuing resolution, and we have updated our map to include these. In the absence of a long-term reauthorization of CHIP, we are continuing to track the actions states are taking to notify CHIP enrollees of the possibility of coverage loss.

SHVS will be tracking notifications and other actions that states are taking on CHIP and will update this map as new information becomes available. If your state has taken action to notify enrollees of coverage loss or has issued a notification related to the continuing resolution, please let us know by emailing heatherh@princeton.edu.