It’s a beautiful morning in Pittsburgh, but Ariel Haughton is stressed out. She’s worried her young children’s health insurance coverage will soon lapse.
“So, we’re like a low-middle-class family, right?” she says. “I’m studying. My husband’s working, and our insurance right now is 12 percent of our income — just for my husband and I. And it’s not very good insurance either.”
The policy that covers the couple requires high fees to even see a doctor, and it has a high deductible for further treatment.
In contrast, her young children — 2-year-old Nonnie and his big sister, Rose — are covered right now through the Children’s Health Insurance Program, or CHIP, a federal-state program that was created two decades ago to ensure that kids whose parents don’t have a lot of money, yet make too much money to qualify for Medicaid, can still get health care.
Right now, that coverage for the children doesn’t cost the family anything.