Congress and President Bush are gearing up for a fight this week over the fate of the State Children's Health Insurance Program . Depending on the outcome, hundreds of thousands of California kids could lose their health coverage. KPBS reporter Kenny Goldberg has more.
The program is known as Healthy Families in California . It covers children whose parents make too much to qualify for Medi-Cal, but not enough to afford private insurance.
Congress wants to expand the program. President Bush wants to cut the number of kids who could qualify for it.
Ted Lempert heads up the non-profit group Children Now .
Lempert : If the president gets his way on this, we could be moving backwards and we could see, children in California losing health insurance, rather than making sure that there's no child in this state without health insurance.
The president's position undermines Governor Schwarzenegger's plan to expand health insurance to more California children. In fact, if President Bush prevails, some 200,000 kids in the state could lose coverage.
Kenny Goldberg, KPBS News.
