Republican-led legislatures in Arizona and Florida in 2023 passed bills to expand their states’ Children’s Health Insurance Program. Arizona and Florida — whose rates of uninsured children are among the highest in the nation — set goals last year to widen the safety net that provides health insurance to people 18 and younger.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and Arizona Gov. Katie Hobbs then signed bills into law last year that increased the amount of money a family can make and still be eligible for their states’ CHIP programs. That’s where the similarities end.to apply Affordable Care Act-style protections to CHIP, such as eliminating annual and lifetime limits on coverage and lockouts if families don’t pay premiums., suspended monthly premiums in 2020 — during the pandemic — and has yet to reinstate them.
But Florida officials have said complying with a provision that bars children from being disenrolled for unpaid premiums would cause the state to lose $1 million a month. The state’sfrom CHIP for unpaid premiums since the rule banning disenrollment took effect Jan. 1, according to public records obtained by the Florida Health Justice Project, a nonprofit advocacy group.
“He has to have health insurance,” she said. “But it’s going to drain my savings, which was going to be for a house one day.”, director of health policy for the Children’s Action Alliance of Arizona, a nonprofit that promotes health insurance coverage for kids in the state.