Bob CollinsLost amid all the focus on sexual harassment, Roy Moore, and the presidential tweets of the day is the fact that the Children’s Health Insurance Program will run out of money in February. The program was created two decades ago to ensure health care for kids whose parents don’t have a lot of money, yet make too much money to qualify for Medicaid.
That’s about 9 million kids, but Congress let the program expire in September.
“It’s extremely important,” says Timothy McBride, a professor of health economics at Washington University in St. Louis, “because it’s developmental — it’s vaccines. You know it can reduce the likelihood that a person has a lifelong chronic disease.”
“Parents are literally telling us they don’t know what to do,” Dr. Todd Wolynn, a pediatrician, tells NPR. “They make too much to get Medicaid and they don’t have jobs or earn enough to get the commercial insurance. I don’t know what to tell them to do.”
Maybe the issue will get some attention now that the Alabama Senate race has been settled and a famous man hasn’t been accused of sexual harassment for 13, 14 hours now.
Until then, it falls to a late-night comedian to keep it front and center.
