Senate Finance Pushes for SCHIP Expansion in Budget Bill

Senate Finance Committee leaders are urging colleagues in charge of drafting the chamber’s fiscal 2008 budget resolution to include funding for expansion of the State Children’s Health Insurance Program. The budget plan also should fund expanded efforts to enroll low-income Medicare beneficiaries in the program’s prescription drug benefit and to protect rural areas from underpayment by Medicare, committee chairman Max Baucus, D-Mont., and Charles E. Grassley, R-Iowa, said in a “views and estimates” letter sent Friday to the Senate Budget Committee.