Life on Richthofen: Millions of children could lose their health care (signatures needed)

Tell Congress: Save CHIP now

The petition to Congress reads:
"Immediately renew the Children's Health Insurance Program and refuse to trade CHIP for deep cuts to Medicare, Medicaid, the Affordable Care Act or any other part of our social safety net."

Add your name:

Dear Katy,

Trump Republicans have put the lives of millions of children in jeopardy.¹

The Children's Health Insurance Program (CHIP) covers essential health services for more than 9 million low- and middle-income children in states across the country, and morally bankrupt Republican congressional leaders just let its federal funding expire.²

Mitch McConnell, Paul Ryan and other cruel right-wing extremists in Congress could have saved CHIP months ago, but instead they launched several failed attempts to gut the Affordable Care Act. Now, they are trying to leverage CHIP to make deep cuts to our social safety net.³ We must speak out now to demand that Congress immediately renews CHIP with no strings attached.

Tell Congress: Every child deserves health coverage. Renew federal funding for CHIP now. Click here to sign the petition.

CHIP is a widely successful health program. It has lowered the percentage of uninsured children in the United States from nearly 14 percent, when the Clinton administration launched the program in 1997, to 4.5 percent in 2015.⁴

Low- and middle-income children and pregnant women rely on CHIP to access:

Preventive health check ups
Immunizations
Dental and vision care
Lab work and x-rays
Emergency services

Allowing federal funding for CHIP to expire shows that Republicans are incapable of governing. It also makes clear that their heartless party cares more about advancing their cruel agenda than the lives of American children. Providing health care for children should not even be up for debate, but Republican leaders are so consumed with their quest to gut our health care and social safety net that no vulnerable population is off limits for them to exploit.

Right-wing Republicans Sens. Lindsey Graham and Bill Cassidy derailed legislation to renew CHIP when they introduced their latest version of Trumpcare in September. Instead of advancing a bill to reauthorize CHIP, Republicans put the full weight of their caucus behind legislation that would have stripped health care away from low-income people and children, women, seniors and sick people just to give Donald Trump the win he so desperately wants. Our resistance forced Republicans to give up their Trumpcare push for the time being, but the fight to protect our health care and the health care of our children is far from over.

States like Arizona, California, Nevada, North Carolina and Utah are already running out of funding to keep their state's CHIP program going. Minnesota will run out of funding by the end of October.⁵ In the face of massive public outrage over their failure to fund CHIP, Republicans in the Senate Finance Committee recently advanced a bill to restore funding, but House Republicans are refusing to finance CHIP without cuts to Medicare and the Affordable Care Act.⁶ We must speak out now to demand that Congress restores CHIP and refuses to advance any bill that trades funding for the program for cuts to any part of our social safety net. Add your name now.

Tell Congress: Every child deserves health coverage. Renew federal funding for CHIP now. Click the link below to sign the petition.

https://act.credoaction.com/sign/congress-chip?t=7&akid=25407%2E12967895%2Eb1DGCe

Thanks for all you do,

Nicole Regalado, Campaign Manager
CREDO Action from Working Assets

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