Jeff Bingaman United States Senator from New Mexico

WASHINGTON –The U.S. Senate today approved legislation (66-32) that U.S. Senator Jeff Bingaman helped write to ensure that more New Mexicans could have access to health care. The measure must now be reconciled with the House of Representatives' version of the bill, before it can be sent to the president for signature.

The Senate approved legislation that reauthorizes the State Children's Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) -- the state/federal health care initiative crated in 1997 that covers millions of children and others who do not qualify for Medicaid but whose families cannot afford health insurance.  Under the bill, an additional 3.9 million uninsured American children would be covered by SCHIP.

Overall the measure sets aside $32.3 billion over the next four and a half years to ensure that 13 million American children will either maintain health care coverage or receive it for the first time. As a member of Senate Finance Committee, Bingaman worked extensively on the bill and had several provisions included in the measure to specifically address New Mexico's needs.  

As a result of this legislation, New Mexico would stand to receive $196 million for SCHIP this year, which represents a 277 percent increase over the state current SCHIP allotment -- the fourth largest percentage increase of any state. With this funding, tens-of-thousands of additional New Mexico children -- and some adults -- would have access to health care for the first time. 

"Even in the best economic times, New Mexico has one of the highest uninsured rates in the country. But now that the economy has taken a terrible downturn, the problem can only get worse," Bingaman said. "Our goal with this legislation is to reach out to as many young people as possible, and I am pleased that thousands of New Mexico children would be covered for the first time under this bill."

At Bingaman's urging, the measure corrects an inequity in the law that has prevented New Mexico from covering a certain category of low-income New Mexico children, and required the state to return more than $180 million to the federal government since 1998. Bingaman was able to ensure that category of children could be covered. 

He was also able to secure significant improvements in a federal law that made it very difficult for New Mexicans to prove that they were American citizens and, therefore, eligible for SCHIP. Thousands of U.S. citizen children in New Mexico and throughout the country have inappropriately lost coverage because of this requirement. The legislation now creates a system by which states can verify Social Security numbers to confirm citizenship. It also allows official tribal documents to be used to be used as proof. 

"Under current law, too many New Mexicans were being denied healthcare because it was too hard for them to prove their citizenship. We have fixed that unnecessary problem in this bill," Bingaman said. 

The bill also creates an initiative that Bingaman pushed for many years, which would allow states to automatically enroll children in SCHIP if they have already been deemed eligible for another public program, such as the National School Lunch Program or the Food Stamp Program, with comparable income guidelines. He was also successful in adding an amendment that makes additional improvements to ensure that this "auto enrollment" provision is as streamlined as possible.

 "If we know a child is eligible for SCHIP, we should make it as easy as possible to enroll him or her in the program. My amendment cuts out a piece of the federal bureaucracy that has been preventing New Mexicans from receiving health care," Bingaman said.

The bill contains a long-time championed Bingaman provision to mandate dental coverage for children receiving SCHIP benefits as well as a "wrap" provisions he co-sponsored during the mark-up to allow children with private coverage who don't receive dental benefits to receive such benefits through SCHIP. Currently, SCHIP does not cover dental care.

"Dental services are an essential part of comprehensive health care for young people," Bingaman said. "Children suffer needlessly in pain and, in some cases, have even died from lack of access to dental care.  It's time for Congress to ensure that children can get all the care they need."

The bill also does the following:

• Ensures that New Mexico can continue to provide coverage through SCHIP to parents of enrolled children, and other low-income adults.
• Gives incentive bonus payments to do outreach and enrollment of young people into Medicaid, and significantly increases outreach to Native American communities.
• Gives community health workers and promatoras access to funding for outreach and enrollment in Medicaid and SCHIP
• Ensures that children enrolled in SCHIP have access to robust mental health benefits.