On December 12, the Senate Finance Committee approved, by voice vote, the Supporting At-Risk Children Act (as-yet-unnumbered), and the Sustainable Growth Rate (SGR) Repeal and Medicare Beneficiary Access Improvement Act (as-yet-unnumbered).
Child Welfare
According to the committee summary, the Supporting At-Risk Children Act would extend the adoption incentives grant program through FY2016. The bill would replace the current award system with a rate-based system. The Family Connection Grant Program also would be extended for three years. The summary notes that the grants implement four kinds of programs that enable children in foster care to stay connected with family. The House approved similar legislation, the Promoting Adoption and Legal Guardianship for Children in Foster Care Act (H.R. 3205), in October (see The Source, 10/25/13).
Title II of the bill addresses the needs of youth vulnerable to sex trafficking. Each state, in consultation with child protective services agencies, would be required to demonstrate that it has developed policies and procedures for identifying and screening children that the state believes are victims of sex trafficking. A national advisory committee on domestic sex trafficking would be established and would be responsible for the “development of a definition of commercial sexual exploitation of children and for developing best practices for the prevention and intervention of domestic sex trafficking of minors.”
The legislation also contains provisions to strengthen child support enforcement. Specifically, the bill seeks to ratify the Hague Convention on the International Recovery of Child Support and Other Forms of Family Maintenance. The bill would establish a child support enforcement task force to study and evaluate the effectiveness of existing child support enforcement programs and collection practices by state agencies.
Medicare Payments
Most of the provisions in the SGR Repeal and Medicare Beneficiary Access Improvement Act relate to Medicare payments to physicians and other health professionals and improving services provided under Medicare. However, the bill also would extend several other programs, including those important to low-income women and their families.
The Transitional Medical Assistance program, which allows low-income families to maintain Medicaid coverage as they transition into employment, would be extended through 2018. According to the committee summary, the bill would extend Express Lane Eligibility (ELE) for state Medicaid and Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP) coverage. ELE permits states to use data from other state programs, such as SNAP and school lunch programs, to determine a child’s eligibility for CHIP.
The Personal Responsibility Education Program (PREP), which was established in the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (P.L. 111-148) to “fund evidence-based programs to educate adolescents about abstinence, contraception, and adulthood,” would be extended for an additional five years at the current funding level of $75 million annually.
Abstinence-only education grants would be extended through FY2019 at $50 million annually. The Family-to-Family Health Information Centers program would be extended for an additional five years, at $6 million annually. The program was established to provide health care information and resources to families of children with special health care needs.
