Our organizations represent children, pregnant women, families, children’s health care providers and advocates across the country, and we speak here with one voice to urge the U.S. Senate to keep health coverage for children strong by rejecting the Graham-Cassidy health care repeal bill.

The bill is an assault on the health and futures of our children, pregnant women, and adults and our nation. Yet the Senate is poised to run ahead to vote on the bill without a complete assessment from the Congressional Budget office on the cost of care and numbers of children, pregnant women and others who will lose coverage.

The Graham-Cassidy bill fails children by ending the Medicaid program as we know it, jeopardizing comprehensive, affordable health coverage for the 72 million vulnerable Americans, 37 million of them children, who rely on Medicaid for their health care.

Medicaid covers more than 40 percent of all children with special health care needs,roughly half of all births each year, and provides indispensable care for pregnant women. Medicaid offers comprehensive benefits many private health plans won’t cover, like hearing and vision screenings, and wheelchairs and hearing aids to meet children’s needs as they grow and develop. Medicaid is there for families struggling from the opioid epidemic, covering treatment for parents and services for their children, and from other disasters. Medicaid is there for families living at or near poverty and for children and youth in foster care. But if this bill passes, Medicaid will no longer be there for any of them.

The Graham-Cassidy bill fails children by leaving more families uninsured, or without insurance that meets their basic needs. It would return us to a day when insurance companies can deny essential health services, including mental health, substance abuse treatment, and maternity care, and discriminate against children and adults with pre-existing conditions. This bill’s deep and growing cuts in federal funding for states—estimated to be $4 trillion over the next twenty years—would likely result in tens of millions of adults and children losing coverage.

By focusing on passing the Graham-Cassidy bill next week, Congress is also poised to miss a real deadline, passage of a long-term extension of funding for the bipartisan Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP) by September 30, 2017. CHIP works because it is built on the strong foundation of Medicaid, and the two together have helped reduce the number of uninsured children by a remarkable 68 percent in the last 20 years. Just one week ago, a strong bipartisan bill was introduced to extend CHIP funding for five years, but now action to get CHIP over the finish line has stalled. Instead we are struggling to fight back the Graham-Cassidy bill that would dismantle rather than improve coverage for millions of children and pregnant women and also establish an enormous new block grant that threatens CHIP’s unique valuable focus on maternal and child health.

Today, a record 95 percent of children in America have health coverage. Rather than build on this progress, the Graham-Cassidy bill tears it down. Our nation’s children deserve health coverage that is there for them and their families. They certainly deserve better than the Graham-Cassidy bill.

“This is the most harmful healthcare bill yet. It’s beleaguering for American families to wonder what their future holds, as Congress cobbles together its latest answer to the ACA. We need policymakers to rethink this bill, with a clear ‘do no harm’ focus on our youngest citizens. The Graham-Cassidy bill is the complete opposite – it would do significant harm to the 37 million children who rely on Medicaid.”“The First Focus Campaign for Children strongly urges the Senate to oppose the Graham-Cassidy proposal, and instead create a healthcare solution that both sides can agree on – one that puts children and families first, and builds a brighter future for generations to come.”

WASHINGTON—With only a handful of legislative days left to extend funding for the popular and bipartisan Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP), Congress is focused instead on a proposal by Senators Cassidy, Graham, Heller, and Johnson to do enormous harm to the Medicaid program and the 38 million children who depend on it.

Bruce Lesley, President of the First Focus Campaign for Children, said:

“The nearly 9 million American kids who rely on CHIP for their healthcare are once again being ignored by a Congress intent on playing politics with their well-being. The program expires in just days and, yet, the bipartisan bill (S.1827) to extend CHIP’s funding is just sitting in committee while congressional leaders consider trying to once again eviscerate Medicaid and undermine consumer protections for children, this time led by Senators Cassidy, Graham, Heller, and Johnson.

This new Republican proposal includes the same devastating provisions for children that the two previous ACA repeal and replace bills contained earlier this summer.

It cuts coverage for millions of Americans and underfunds Medicaid by hundreds of billions of dollars, and allows states to end protections that ensure coverage for people with pre-existing conditions.

Currently, Medicaid covers 38 million kids.

The proposal’s most troubling aspects for children and families are the imposition of a per capita cap on Medicaid for children, people with disabilities, and senior citizens (along with an option for states to convert that to a block grant), and a full-blown conversion of Medicaid coverage for low-income adults and Obamacare tax credits into block grants to states.

At the end of the day, the Cassidy-Graham-Heller-Johnson proposal is nothing more than a cynical shuffling of federal dollars from some states to others in a somewhat desperate attempt to entice some governors and senators in so-called “winner states.”

Read More: Bruce Lesley in Medium--Another Reason to Oppose Graham-Cassidy: Hurricanes

###

WASHINGTON—The First Focus Campaign for Children strongly supports the bipartisan agreement in the Senate Finance Committee to fund a five-year extension to the popular and effective Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP), which covers 9 million low-income children. Funding for the program is set to expire on September 30.

First Focus Campaign for Children President Bruce Lesley said:

“We applaud Chairman Hatch and Ranking Member Wyden for making the health and well-being of America’s children a priority. Nearly 9 million kids from hardworking families who can’t afford health coverage, but earn too much to qualify for Medicaid, depend on CHIP.

Since CHIP was enacted 20 years ago, the uninsured rate for children in the US has been slashed by two-thirds. We’ve made too much progress to move backwards or put the health of millions of children at risk.

CHIP has proven to be an enormous, child-centered success story. We urge Congressional leaders to take action and pass, without delay, this proposed bipartisan five-year CHIP extension.”

WASHINGTON—Back in January, the First Focus Campaign for Children (FFCC) signed a letter with other major child advocacy groups urging Congress to adopt principles to ensure any legislative process improves the health of our nation’s children and, at the very least, commits to “do no harm.”

Fortunately, at 1:39 a.m. this morning, the Senate voted 49-51 to defeat the “Health Care Freedom Act” (HCFA), an 11th hour amendment offered by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) at the close of debate. This Senate health care bill would have resulted in an estimated 16 million Americans losing health coverage and a 20 percent increase in insurance premiums.

That is the opposite of progress and, consequently, the First Focus Campaign for Children strongly opposed the bill.

It is also important to note that, even prior to the defeat of HCFA, the Senate was unable to find 50 votes to impose the hundreds of billions of dollars in Medicaid cuts and caps originally considered by the Senate. Medicaid per capita caps and block grants would have harmed millions of children in every single state across the country.

Bruce Lesley, President of the First Focus Campaign for Children, said:

“We are glad that, after months of debate and advocacy, the American people rose up to oppose the $880 billion in Medicaid cuts that were approved by the House. That legislative proposal, the American Health Care Act (AHCA), and numerous subsequent drafts of the bill violated the simple critical principle to ‘do no harm’ that the children’s advocacy community called for six months ago.

We thank all the members of the Senate who voted against HCFA, including Senators Susan Collins (R-ME), Lisa Murkowski (R-AK), and John McCain (R-AZ).

Moving forward, we call on Congress to heed the call of Senator McCain to go back to the drawing board, pursue regular order, engage stakeholders and experts from across the country, and work toward bipartisan solutions that improve the lives of Americans and not leave people worse off. Too many lives are at stake for Congress to consider moving forward without broad bipartisan agreement and a coherent plan.

We urge Congress to do right by the next generation. Any bill must protect the most vulnerable among us, including low-income children, newborns, foster kids, and children with complex medical conditions -- most of whom had nothing to do with Obamacare and, yet, were targeted by the House for cuts and harm.

We call on our nation’s leaders to ensure their actions or votes will improve the health and well-being of children and not make things worse. Again, at the very least, they should agree to always ‘do no harm.'"

WASHINGTON—The Republicans released a revised health care bill today to replace the Affordable Care Act (ACA). The new proposal maintains some of the ACA taxes on the wealthy, allows insurers to offer skimpier plans, and provides new financial support to buy health insurance.

First Focus President Bruce Lesley says:

“There is still not a single provision in this latest proposal that would improve the lives of children in America. Not one. And the latest version also does nothing to mitigate the harm that the legislation would have on kids. It’s time to abandon this futile exercise and strengthen--not weaken--protections for kids.

In our country, we have reached a point where 95 percent of children now have health coverage. Sadly, this bill will take us backwards through the imposition of $1 trillion or more in draconian cuts to our nation’s health care system. The cruel irony of its name – the Better Care Reconciliation Act – attempts to hide the fact that the bill would strip coverage and consumer protections from millions of children and families.

The assault on Medicaid is an historic bait-and-switch scam. Nobody who promised to “repeal and replace” the Affordable Care Act said they would eviscerate Medicaid to the tune of more than $800 billion dollars. With more than 37 million children enrolled in Medicaid, compared to 1 million in Obamacare, this is a direct assault on children that nobody campaigned on. Sadly, the bill would impose more draconian and arbitrary cuts and per capita caps upon the Medicaid program than even the House bill, which President Trump himself referred to as ‘mean.’

There is no way to shield our nation’s most vulnerable children from Medicaid cuts of this magnitude. In fact, contrary to the President’s promise not to cut Medicaid and eliminate onerous regulations, the bill slashes Medicaid by hundreds of billions of dollars out of health coverage and gives states incentives to impose new bureaucracy and red tape barriers to coverage.

For cover, the “Better” Care draft bill attempts to include a few provisions to make the draconian bill appear less harmful to children and families. But, under scrutiny, they will do nothing to prevent the oncoming disaster this legislation would unleash."

###

WASHINGTON – Following the 217-213 vote in the US House of Representatives to repeal the Affordable Care Act (ACA) and replace it with the American Health Care Act (AHCA), millions of American kids and families will be negatively impacted if the bill becomes law.

Most important for children, the legislation includes fundamental and catastrophic cuts to Medicaid, which 38 million kids currently rely on for health services.

First Focus Campaign for Children President Bruce Lesley said:

“It’s no exaggeration to call today one of the saddest days in our nation’s history when it comes to the health and well-being of American children, as the bill would roll back decades of progress. It violates the Hippocratic Oath, which is to ‘first, do no harm.’

At a time when Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP) have helped reduce the rate of uninsured children to the lowest number in American history -- with more than 95 percent of children having some form of health insurance -- the House approved a bill that would undermine this success by slashing $839 billion from the Medicaid program.

The House bill ends the popular, successful 50-year-old Medicaid entitlement as we know it through the imposition of arbitrary caps and threatens access for all Americans to affordable and meaningful health benefits like newborn services, pediatric services, maternity care, emergency care, mental health treatment, and medically necessary rehabilitative and rehabilitation services for children with special needs.

This bill is a direct attack on the 38 million children who rely on Medicaid for their health coverage -- children make up more than 50 percent of the Medicaid population. It is also an attack on states who get shortchanged in the AHCA deal. With a cut of $839 billion and provisions to establish Medicaid per capita caps or block grants, states will have no choice but to ration care for our nation’s sickest and most vulnerable citizens by creating wait lists, cutting eligibility, benefits, services, and payments to providers.

“We are deeply disappointed that lawmakers who talk a good game about protecting children have turned their back on the most vulnerable Americans. We look now to the Senate to take up the mantle for kids and protect the guarantee of Medicaid as the legislative process moves forward.”

###

The First Focus Campaign for Children is a 501(c)(4) nonprofit organization affiliated with First Focus, a bipartisan children’s advocacy organization. The Campaign for Children advocates directly for legislative change in Congress to ensure children and families are a priority in federal policy and budget decisions.

The Children's Health Insurance Program (CHIP) has enjoyed strong, bipartisan support for decades, and ensures that children have access to health benefits like well-child checkups, vaccines and more.

With CHIP funding set to expire on September 30, 2017, long-term funding is needed for this program soon. Please use the toolkit resources below to solicit organizations to add their name to this CHIP sign-on letter to ensure that CHIP continues to help the families and children who need it most.

LETTER TO CONGRESS

• Read the letter
• Sign the letter

RESOURCES

• Fact Sheet: Key Facts about the CHIP Program (FirstFocus.org)
• Fact Sheet: Why CHIP is Still the Best Deal for Kids (FirstFocus.org)
• Op-Ed: Renewing CHIP is a Bipartisan No-brainer (YouthToday)

SAMPLE NEWLSETTER TEXT

Subject Line: Join the Movement Urging Congress to Extend CHIP Funding

Headline: Add Your Name: Tell Congress to Extend CHIP Funding

Subhead:  [ORG] Signs Letter Urging Lawmakers to Extend CHIP Funding

Body:

More than 8.9 million American children and families rely on the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP) to keep their kids healthy through checkups, vaccines and more. It’s a program that has enjoyed strong bipartisan support for decades. But current funding expires on September 30, 2017. First Focus is circulating a new CHIP sign-on letter among thousands of groups urging Congress to extend funding for CHIP as soon as possible.

[ORG] has signed this letter and asks you [affiliates, partners] to join us by adding your organization's name to this letter. These letters work; a previous sign-on effort in February 2015 resulted in more than 1,600 national, state and local organizations!

This letter is a fantastic tool to demonstrate strong support for CHIP's continuation. We ask for your support now to ensure that families continue to receive health care for their children.

In times of great uncertainty in Congress, we need your help to ensure CHIP funding is extended. [ORG] has signed the letter by First Focus calling on Congress to take "swift action" on extending CHIP funding to ensure that health care coverage for 8.9 million children will not be disrupted.

Won't you join us? It’s easy:

1. Read the letter.
2. Add your name.
3. Tell your networks

The deadline for signing has been extended to May 10, 2017.

Thank you for raising your voice for children!

SAMPLE SOCIAL MEDIA POSTS

• 8.9M children rely on #CHIP. Add your voice to tell Congress to extend funding: http://ow.ly/ZJ7030bemrF #CHIPworks #InvestInKids
• #CHIP assures a pediatric-appropriate network of providers. Urge Congress to extend funding: http://ow.ly/ZJ7030bemrF #CHIPworks #InvestInKids
• 8.9M children could lose health coverage in September. Urge Congress to extend #CHIP funding:http://ow.ly/ZJ7030bemrF.  #CHIPworks
• #CHIP is good for kids, good for families, good for states, & good for taxpayers. What’re they waiting for? http://ow.ly/ZJ7030bemrF #CHIPworks
• #CHIP is proven to be a cost-effective, evidence-based program that works for children. Tell Congress to extend funding: http://ow.ly/ZJ7030bemrF #CHIPworks #InvestInKids
• Failure by Congress to extend funding for CHIP would be devastating for the 8.9M children who rely on it. #CHIPworks
• #CHIP has a long history of bipartisan support. Tell Congress to renew & extend funding: http://ow.ly/ZJ7030bemrF. #CHIPworks

SOCIAL MEDIA GRAPHICS

Choose from one of four social media graphics to share with partners, chapters and networks to urge them to add their name to this critical letter.

Download Graphic #1

Download Graphic #2

Download Graphic #3

Download Graphic #4

FOR INDIVIDUALS

Not with an official organization? You can still make your voice heard. Use this petition form to send a letter to your member of Congress and urge them to extend CHIP funding. This is the text that will be sent:

I’m writing to urge you to support long-term funding for the Children's Health Insurance Program.

CHIP has enjoyed strong, bipartisan support for decades, and ensures that children have access to health benefits like well-child checkups, vaccines and more.

With CHIP funding set to expire on September 30, 3017, long-term funding is needed for this program soon. Please work with other policymakers on Capitol Hill to ensure that CHIP continues to help the families and children who need it most.

QUESTIONS? 

Please reach out to Lisa Shapiro, Vice President of Health Policy: [email protected].

This afternoon, Speaker Paul Ryan (R-WI) announced that the House of Representatives would not put to a vote the American Health Care Act, H.R. 1648, legislation that would have repealed the Affordable Care Act and fundamentally restructured the Medicaid program. This news is a relief for the 37 million children and their families who rely on Medicaid for their health coverage as well as the other vulnerable populations whose care would have been cut if the House bill was approved. In response, First Focus Campaign for Children President Bruce Lesley issued the following statement:

“We applaud those Members of Congress who heeded pleas from constituents across the country and were willing to vote against passage of the AHCA. Their courage in standing up for children among other vulnerable populations of Americans will allow the families of the 37 million children who are insured through Medicaid to sleep easier tonight knowing that their coverage and benefits remain intact.

“At a time when Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP) have helped to reduce the rate of uninsured children to the lowest number in American history -- with more than 95 percent of children having some form of health insurance -- the House has chosen wisely not to advance a bill that would undermine this success.

“If Congress is interested in improving the health and well-being of America’s children, instead of draconian cuts that would end the Medicaid entitlement, we urge Members to protect the programs like Medicaid and CHIP, which have been so successful in keeping our children healthy and on a path to becoming productive adults.

“The AHCA was wrong for children, wrong for families, and wrong for America. Instead of dismantling the programs that are working well to protect and improve health care for millions of Americans, Congress should get back to work and start from the beginning, convening stakeholders, holding hearings, and tackling the real issues that are most important to children and families – ensuring access to high quality, affordable care that meets the needs of every family member."

###

The First Focus Campaign for Children is a 501(c)(4) nonprofit organization affiliated with First Focus, a bipartisan children’s advocacy organization. The Campaign for Children advocates directly for legislative change in Congress to ensure children and families are a priority in federal policy and budget decisions.

(WASHINGTON, DC) – Earlier this afternoon, Speaker Paul Ryan (R-WI) announced a delay in the vote on the American Health Care Act (AHCA) (H.R. 1648) when it became apparent the bill did not have sufficient votes to secure its passage tonight. As drafted, the AHCA would repeal the Affordable Care Act and fundamentally restructure the Medicaid program, jeopardizing coverage for millions of children and families. In response, First Focus Campaign for Children President Bruce Lesley issued the following statement.

“Families across the United States are breathing a sigh of relief with the announcement of the delay in the vote on the AHCA. In the strongest possible terms, we urge Members of Congress to take a closer look at the legislation and use this time to understand the devastating impact the AHCA would have on children and families across the nation. Far from improving coverage and affordability of health care, this bill would cut $880 billion from Medicaid, which millions of our children, seniors, and disabled Americans rely on. The House bill ends the Medicaid entitlement, decimates coverage for children and other vulnerable populations and threatens access for all Americans to affordable and meaningful health benefits like maternity care, mental health treatment and medically necessary services for children with special needs.

“This bill is a direct attack on children, who make up nearly 50 percent of the Medicaid population. It is also an attack on states who get shortchanged in the AHCA deal. Cuts in the magnitude of $880 billion through provisions to establish Medicaid per capita caps or block grants shift significant costs to states, leaving governors with no choice but to ration care for our nation’s sickest and most vulnerable citizens by creating wait lists, cutting eligibility, benefits, services, and payments to providers.

 “At a time when Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP) have helped to reduce the rate of uninsured children to the lowest number in American history -- with more than 95 percent of children having some form of health insurance -- now is not the time to gut the very programs responsible for this success.

“We applaud the families who continue to tell their stories to their Members of Congress about what is at stake for their children. As the House continues to hold off on a vote of this bill, we urge all Members of Congress to adopt a ‘do no harm’ approach and resolve to protect our nation’s most vulnerable children.”

###

The First Focus Campaign for Children is a 501(c)(4) nonprofit organization affiliated with First Focus, a bipartisan children’s advocacy organization. The Campaign for Children advocates directly for legislative change in Congress to ensure children and families are a priority in federal policy and budget decisions.