Michigan Primary Care Association (MPCA) joins the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) in celebrating the one-year anniversary of the Children’s Health Insurance Program Reauthorization Act (CHIPRA).
Under this historic legislation MPCA received $915,079 in grant funding to launch a community-based initiative to enroll children in two health insurance programs recently expanded through CHIPRA. Both HealthyKids and MIChild offer families comprehensive health coverage including regular check‐ups, dental care, immunizations and prescription drugs.
“Over 140,000 Michigan children lack health insurance coverage because their parents have lost their jobs, employer-sponsored coverage has been eliminated, or it simply costs too much,” said Phillip Bergquist, CHIPRA Program Manager. “An overwhelming number of families think they can’t get health insurance coverage because they make too much money when, in reality, the majority of children covered by MIChild, the state’s Children’s Health Insurance Program, come from working families.”
To help identify eligible children and get them enrolled, MPCA, working through the Community HealthCorps program, is bringing enrollment specialists to Community Health Centers, schools, migrant camps, churches, homeless shelters, and other community organizations from Marquette to Detroit to get children covered.
“We want to impact the lives of 12,000 children in the next two years, and ultimately reduce the number of uninsured children in our state to zero,” said Bergquist.
Since CHIPRA was signed into law one year ago, 2.6 million more children have been served by Medicaid or the Children’s Health Insurance Program at some point during the past 12 months. Nearly five million children, however, are still eligible for Medicaid or CHIP but not enrolled.
To read more about the one-year anniversary as highlighted in “The Children’s Health Insurance Program Reauthorization Act One Year Later: Connecting Kids to Coverage” released this week by HHS, click here.