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CHIP Funding Temporarily Extended

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Florida KidCare is getting a temporary funding extension. The money for the low-cost health insurance plan was written into the stop-gap federal spending bill.

The Children’s Health Insurance Program sends federal funds to low-cost, state-run insurance plans for kids.

In this state, the insurance plan is known as Florida KidCare. And it covers about 160,000 children whose families make too much money to qualify for Medicaid, but not enough to afford health insurance.

The program has bipartisan support, but Congress failed to reauthorize the CHIP budget earlier in 2017. It expired in September, and Florida was expected to run out of money for KidCare by January.

The new temporary federal spending bill, which was passed just before Christmas break, sends six months of funding to CHIP.

The funding is retroactive, meaning the federal funds will stop again in March.