States continue to face uncertainty as of December 15, 2017 about Federal funding for the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP). Congressional authorization of new Federal funds for CHIP expired on September 30, 2017.

On October 4, 2017, the U.S. Senate Finance Committee approved a bill that would reauthorize federal funding through FFY 2022 for the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP), a program that currently serves over nine million low-income children. New funding authorization for CHIP expired on September 30, 2017. For now, states are operating CHIP on federal allotments left over from prior years. Those reserves vary widely from state to state.

On September 13, 2017, U.S. Senators Lindsey Graham, Bill Cassidy, Dean Heller, and Ron Johnson introduced legislation to scrap many provisions of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) while imposing funding caps on the traditional Medicaid program. 

On July 28, 2017, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) issued a proposed rule to implement $43 billion in reductions in federal Medicaid allotments to state Medicaid agencies for payment adjustments to hospitals serving a disproportionate share of low-income persons. The reductions in such allotments under the proposed rule will apply to federal fiscal years 2018-2025.