While the nation has been busy paying attention to everything from our president mocking a senator’s height to a horrific mass shooting, congressional Republicans quietly let funding for health coverage for 9 million children slip away. In defense of lawmakers in Congress, they actually weren’t focusing on Trump’s tweets and shootings, they were focusing on repealing Obamacare.
At the end of September, Congress missed the deadline to reauthorize the Children’s Health Insurance Program. Funding lapsed on September 30 for a health insurance program that covers 9 million children. CHIP helps lower and middle-income families who can’t afford health insurance and is attributed with dramatically lowering the rates of uninsured kids. (You know, so they won’t, um, die.)
The reason Congress missed the deadline is because the grand legislative body was focused on repealing health care for many millions more, they just didn’t have the time. That’s about it. They were consumed with the Graham-Cassidy bill in the Republican-majority Senate, a last-ditch attempt to repeal Obamacare. “You see, officer, I had to run the stoplight because I was so busy trying to run the next twenty stoplights,” goes the logic.