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DEL.ICIO.USPeachCare wins temporary reprieve
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Congress on Wednesday formally approved funding for a program that provides health insurance to poor children, known nationally as SCHIP and in Georgia as PeachCare.
After a year of political wrangling over the future of the States Children’s Health Insurance Program, Congress was forced in its final days to extend SCHIP funding through March 2009, leaving it to a new Congress to determine whether the program should be expanded.
The measure would keep PeachCare running at its current level, though $1.6 billion was added to SCHIP to protect Georgia and 20 other states from another financial shortfall after a cash shortage this year forced Georgia to freeze PeachCare enrollment. The total allotment is $6.6 billion for programs around the country.
Georgia’s entire congressional delegation voted to extend the funding, including Rep. Jim Marshall of Macon, the only Democrat to oppose his party’s original proposal to expand SCHIP by $35 billion through 2012.
Marshall and congressional Republicans backed the bill because it was only an extension - not an expansion - and didn’t require increased tobacco taxes to fund that expansion.
PeachCare officials said the extension was the second-best choice Congress could have made because it at least provides some budget certainty. Their first choice was the Democratic plan to dramatically expended the program to enroll 4 million more uninsured children nationally - for a total of 10 million.
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