The bill passed by Congress late Thursday to keep most of the federal government funded for another month also provided a temporary reprieve to a number of health programs in danger of running out of money, most notably the Children’s Health Insurance Program, or CHIP.
Funding for CHIP technically expired Oct. 1. States have been operating their programs with leftover funds provided by the Department of Health and Human Services since then. But nearly half of the states were projected to run out of money entirely by the end of January, putting health coverage for nearly 2 million children at risk by that point.
