In a memorandum issued Dec. 10, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimates that the additional funding required to maintain the State Children’s Health Insurance Program at currently projected levels of enrollment for 2008 is an additional $1.4 billion; the net federal cost of providing that funding is estimated at $800 million in new money.
The estimate is based on the $5 billion in funding for 2008 that CBO assumes in its baseline projections, the amount of funding from previous years that remains available, and states’ projections of spending in 2008. (The memorandum explains that a continuing resolution provided funding at an annual level of $5 billion, but limited states’ use of the funds to the period ending Dec. 14, 2007.)
The CBO anticipates that, without additional funding, 21 states will exhaust their SCHIP funding in 2008, and that the first states to exhaust their funding will do so in March 2008. Read the memorandum.
