Murphy proposes $20 million program to insure state’s children

Gov. Phil Murphy on Tuesday announced a new proposal that would appropriate $20 million to pay for unemployed children’s health insurance, a move he said has won the support of President Joe Biden’s administration.

“We know that lack of coverage remains a significant barrier to regular and quality care for so many more,” he said at a press conference in Passaic Tuesday morning. “And we know that healthcare can be made more affordable for all when we expand access to such frontline care, which can help prevent trips to the emergency room, which are vastly more expensive.”

Murphy’s proposal, which won the backing of Senate Health Chairman Joe Vitale (D-Woodbridge) and a slew of other lawmakers who publicly backed it Tuesday morning, would appropriate $20 million to extend health coverage to uninsured children.

The governor says he expects the initial funding will be enough to purchase insurance coverage for roughly 53,000 children, of an estimated 90,000 uninsured minors in the state, over the next year.

“Over the next two years, we can bring the rest along, and the cost of inaction will surely be much greater,” he said.

The proposal — one with a relatively low price tag and that could notably impact low-income families and those still struggling amid the pandemic — would also eliminate a 90-day enrollment waiting period for the Children’s Health Insurance Program and remove premiums paid for children enrolled in the program.

It’s already won the support of some prominent Democrats in the legislature.

“I think we can all agree that one child without insurance is too many and our benchmark for success needs to be covering all kids,” said Assemblywoman Yvonne Lopez (D-Perth Amboy).  “The legislation Senator Vitale and I introduced charts a course to address the issues barring our kids from receiving coverage. We will expand eligibility to all children who meet the income requirement, eliminate the burdensome 90-day waiting period, reestablish the New Jersey Care buy-in program, and ensure a robust outreach program that will target every child in need.”

Assembly Deputy Speaker Gary Schaer (D-Passaic) called the plan “the gamechanger we have all been waiting for.”

“This is the difference between not doing and doing,” Schaer said.  “This legislation will make fundamental change, not over there or there but right here in this wonderful city of Passaic.”

The assemblyman also praised separate health care provisions presented in Murphy’s budget proposal, including $8.5 million to combat maternal mortality, $25 million in health insurance premium subsidies and a little under $7 million.

It’s not yet clear what the state’s budget will look like by June, and though legislators in both chambers have begun holding budget hearings, the process begins in earnest next month, though with $4.2 billion in borrowed funds and billions more in federal aid coming to the state, funding likely won’t be an issue.

The $20 million likely won’t fall onto the chopping block.

“When the governor makes modest, strategic precision investments like this, it makes our job so much easier,” Senate Budget Committee Chairman Paul Sarlo (D-Woodridge) said. “How could you go wrong with a $20 million investment to take care of our children who don’t have medical insurance?”

Still, the proposal isn’t completely without controversy. The second phase of the “Cover All Kids Campaign” rollout would extend coverage options to non-citizen children of immigrants in the country illegally, providing Republicans seeking to maintain the trend of Democrats holding New Jersey’s governorship for one term.

Children of undocumented immigrants who are citizens are eligible for aid in the first phase.

Such attacks, though, would carry some risk.

“There’s nothing more important than having a kid have access to care,” Vitale said. “All those families that are here today understand what it means when your kids are sick.”

A this article was updated to remove an erroneous reference to the program as a “bill” at 5:13 p.m. It is not. This article was updated at the same time to clarify the eligibility of children of undocumented immigrants who are citizens.