Restoration of Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP) funding is a critical issue nationwide as federal funding for all state programs expired on September 30, 2017. About 25 states are expected to run out of funding to operate their CHIP programs by the end of January 2018, at which point the programs will shut down and thousands of children will be left without health insurance. CO and CT announced this week that their CHIP programs would terminate on January 31, 2018 and all state programs will shutter at some point in 2018 if Congress does not restore funding. CHIP insures about nine million children in all states across the country in families that earn too much to qualify for Medicaid.
The short-term funding measure passed by Congress includes a temporary CHIP funding fix that it is estimated would fund most programs until about March 31.
