For almost 25 years, the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP) has been an essential source of children’s coverage, ensuring access to high-quality, affordable, pediatric-appropriate health care for children in working families whose parents earn too much to qualify for Medicaid but too little to purchase private health insurance on their own. CHIP has played a critical role in reducing the number of uninsured children by more than 68 percent, from an uninsurance rate of nearly 15 percent in 1997 to less than five percent in 2016, while improving health outcomes and access to care for children and pregnant women. CHIP, together with Medicaid, plays a particularly important role for children of color: in the first 6 months of 2020, more than half of Black, multi-racial, and Hispanic children relied on Medicaid and CHIP as their source of health coverage.
