Monday, January 14, 2008

Montana Looking at SCHIP Expansion

Voters to decide on SCHIP & Medicaid ballot measure

By Marc Kilmer

Categories: Medicaid, Montana, SCHIP

Montana's state auditor is pushing a ballot initiative to expand the state's children's health insurance program to cover children in families up to 250% of the federal poverty level (FPL) and increase Medicaid eligibility up to 185% of FPL. The proposal would have originally mandated that all children in the state have health insurance, but it was rewritten to remove this mandate.

An interesting addition to the measure is a proposal that would allow the state to pay for private health insurance for children who are eligible for Medicaid or SCHIP but whose parents have private health coverage. If the premium increase for adding the child is less than the cost of covering the child with government insurance, the state would pay for the private coverage. That sounds like a better way of covering people than merely expanding government programs, but I wonder how much crowd-out will occur.