The Children's Health Insurance Program (CHIP), formerly known as the State Children's Health Insurance Program (SCHIP), is a program administered by the United States Department of Health and Human Services that provides matching funds to states for health insurance to families with children. The program was designed to cover uninsured children in families with incomes that are modest but too high to qualify for Medicaid. The program was passed into law as part of the Balanced Budget Act of 1997, and the statutory authority for CHIP is under title XXI of the Social Security Act.
CHIP was formulated in the aftermath of the failure of President Bill Clinton's comprehensive health care reform proposal. First Lady Hillary Clinton's brainchild in the aftermath of the failing of passage of her healthcare reform work, this Legislation to create CHIP was co-sponsored by Democratic senator Ted Kennedy and Republican senator Orrin Hatch. Despite opposition from some conservatives, SCHIP was included in the Balanced Budget Act of 1997, which President Clinton signed into law in August 1997. At the time of its creation, SCHIP represented the largest expansion of taxpayer-funded health insurance coverage for children in the U.S. since the establishment of Medicaid in 1965. The Children's Health Insurance Reauthorization Act of 2009 extended CHIP and expanded the program to cover an additional 4 million children and pregnant women, and the Bipartisan Budget Act of 2018 extended CHIP's authorization through 2027.