 Hillary Clinton. (Pete Marovich/Bloomberg) By Jeff Guo The Children's Health Insurance Program, better known as CHIP, is a somewhat obscure initiative created nearly 20 years ago to help children get health insurance. Last week, it became an unexpected star at the Democratic National Convention, where speakers name-dropped it repeatedly as an example of Hillary Clinton's efforts to improve children's lives. In their remarks, Tim Kaine and Howard Dean and Bill Clinton and Barack Obama all gave Clinton credit for helping CHIP become reality. In her own speech, Clinton touted her work to "help create the Children's Health Insurance Program that covers 8 million kids in our country." On Twitter, people took note of the unusual wonkishness on display — this was "not a common nom[ination] speech topic," pointed out MSNBC's Ari Melber. But the topic was perfectly on-brand for Clinton, who has sought to portray herself as a nitty-gritty politician who "gets things done." CHIP is an important item on Clinton's brag list because it reframes her greatest disappointment as first lady. "Hillarycare," her 1993 effort to secure universal health care for all Americans, was a high-profile failure. But out of the ashes of that fracas came this smaller victory: a plan for the government to help children without health insurance. Although there are questions about Clinton's contributions to CHIP, there is no doubt that the program itself has been seen as a tremendous, bipartisan success. Not only did it accomplish its goal of extending health insurance to millions of children, but it demonstrated a policy idea that would later play a key role in President Obama's Affordable Care Act. | 
Twitter
Facebook
No comments:
Post a Comment