Governor Sonny Perdue was joined by four fellow governors on Capitol Hill today, imploring U.S. lawmakers to re-examine how the national health care program for low-income children is funded.
Perdue was flanked by his counterparts from Mississippi, Massachusetts, Ohio, and Washington State. They were there to deliver their concerns to a House subcommittee over how S-CHIP, or state children’s health insurance programs, is supported on the federal level.
Perdue says Georgia’s program, known as PeachCare, has worked too well, to the point of being penalized.
"We’ve enrolled so many kids in S-CHIP that our percentage of uninsured children has dropped dramatically. And because of this flawed funding model--that partially bases states’ allotments on the number of uninsured children--Georgia, along with our neighbors like Mississippi and North Carolina, are facing growing shortfalls".
Perdue says the growth of Georgia by nearly a million people in five years is not reflected in the money it gets from the federal government. Georgia’s PeachCare program serves more than 230-thousand low-income children.
Congress recently passed an extension for S-CHIP, but without further action, funding would go dry by April 2009.
Perdue was flanked by his counterparts from Mississippi, Massachusetts, Ohio, and Washington State. They were there to deliver their concerns to a House subcommittee over how S-CHIP, or state children’s health insurance programs, is supported on the federal level.
Perdue says Georgia’s program, known as PeachCare, has worked too well, to the point of being penalized.
"We’ve enrolled so many kids in S-CHIP that our percentage of uninsured children has dropped dramatically. And because of this flawed funding model--that partially bases states’ allotments on the number of uninsured children--Georgia, along with our neighbors like Mississippi and North Carolina, are facing growing shortfalls".
Perdue says the growth of Georgia by nearly a million people in five years is not reflected in the money it gets from the federal government. Georgia’s PeachCare program serves more than 230-thousand low-income children.
Congress recently passed an extension for S-CHIP, but without further action, funding would go dry by April 2009.
