News-Record.com

Of interest to lawmakers in Raleigh is the Congressional debate over extending the SCHIP - State Children’s Health Insurance Program.

In North Carolina, federal SCHIP funds help pay for North Carolina Health Choice for Children

The debate in recent days has circulated around its expansion. Specifically, there are objections that the newest version of the Senate bill would open up benefits to one class of immigrants and unintentionally open benefits to another.

"This is another attempt to grow the size of a government program ... without taking on the tough task of debating how in the hell do we fix health care in this country, what are the reforms that have to take place so that every American has the opportunity to be insured," Sen. Richard Burr said during floor debate late this morning.

The Winston-Salem Republican outlined the two major immigration-related objections:

• * First, the bill would remove a five-year waiting period for new immigrants to tap federal government programs. Under current law, for the first five years they are in the country, legal immigrants are supposed to provide for their own health coverage or have it provided by their sponsors.

  The current Senate bill eliminates that requirement for SCHIP.

• * The current senate version of the bill eliminates a photo identification requirement for those seeking coverage under SCHIP, Burr said.

  "We actually threw away the verification that they're legal. ... All we say is you have to have a name and you have to have a Social Security number," Burr said. That type of check can be too easily skirted, he said.

Video here:

(Yes, you have to wait through the end of Sen. Casey's remarks.)

The House passed a similar bill earlier this month.

The Senate is expected to continue the debate through the rest of this week.

According to a spokeswoman in Sen. Kay Hagan's office, the Greensboro Democrat expects to speak on the debate.

A news release from the Democrats who control the Senate Finance Committee pushes back on the immigration arguments this way:

Before 1996, legal immigrants were eligible for Medicaid on the same basis as U.S. citizens. But the 1996 welfare reform law prohibited Federal funding for Medicaid coverage, nutrition assistance (food stamps), and Supplemental Security Income payments to most legal immigrants who had lived in the U.S. for less than five years. The Children’s Health Insurance Program was created in 1997 with the same restrictions.

Congress has already lifted the 1996 restrictions on low-income legal immigrants receiving nutrition assistance Supplemental Security Income. To allow legal immigrant children to receive the doctor’s visits, medicines, and care they need to stay healthy, the Children’s Health Insurance Program Reauthorization Act of 2009 gives states the option to enroll legal immigrant children and legal immigrant pregnant women who have been in the U.S. fewer than five years

More here.