By State Rep. Garnet Coleman

On Monday, the Houston Chronicle ran an op-ed by Tamika Scott, the mother of Devante Johnson. She told the heartbreaking story of how her son, Devante, lost his Children's Health Insurance Program coverage because his papers continued to fall through the cracks. Soon after he lost his health coverage, he lost his life.

In 1999, I was one of the original authors of the bill that created CHIP in Texas. Our goal was always to cover as many children as possible, not create red tape that denied health coverage to children. The administrative barriers Devante faced were the exact barriers we intended to avoid; yet, Devante's experience is one shared by hundreds of thousands of families across Texas. Just this last week, 17,000 children were kicked off CHIP, many due to administrative policies.

Until we remove all the CHIP enrollment barriers, eligible children will continue to unfairly lose their health coverage.

On Jan. 25, I joined more than 30 of my colleagues in the Texas House to announce our filing of legislation to fully restore the Children's Health Insurance Program. Our bills were designed to overturn the restrictive laws, rules and policies enacted in 2003 that have denied health coverage for more than 200,000 Texas children.

Shortly after that day, Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst and House leaders proclaimed that CHIP restoration faced an uphill battle and warned legislators not to expect any CHIP legislation to pass this session. Despite those dire predictions, a committee hearing to discuss positive change for CHIP — the first such hearing since 2001 — was called by Human Services Committee Chairman Patrick Rose (D-Dripping Springs).

At the hearing, families and CHIP activists came together to advocate for the full restoration of CHIP. The dozens of bills we authored were heard, and our legislation — after being compromised to overcome the unfortunate political barriers — passed out of committee and out of the Texas House in the form of Rep. Sylvester Turner's HB 109.

The legislation that finally passed the House — which Dewhurst partially supports — is good because it fixes some of the statutory barriers. However, it fails to address all of the restrictive barriers to the program. Most importantly, it doesn't address the administrative barriers — the ones Devante and others faced — that unfairly deny children CHIP coverage.

Let me tell you why.

Administrative directives are policies that govern the administration of CHIP. These policies are not state laws, which must be established by the Texas Legislature, and they are not commission rules, which must be officially adopted by the commission. These policies may be created or changed at any time by the direction of HHSC Commissioner Albert Hawkins or other high-ranking administrators.

Policy changes made by the HHSC can happen at any time without notice to the Legislature — it really can be done as easily as you turn a faucet on or off. Those changes are also issued with minimum notice to CHIP recipients; in fact, only two days' notice was given to many of the thousands of families whose children lost CHIP coverage this month. What happens to the children who had doctor appointments this week? How can they be expected to find new health coverage in two days time?

We must encourage HHSC to adopt policies and issue administrative directives that are inclusive, and not exclusive, for providing CHIP coverage for our children.

Several months ago, before the most recent policy change by HHSC that led to thousands of children losing health coverage, I visited one of the Texas Access Alliance facilities in South Austin that processes CHIP applications. As one of the main authors that crafted the original CHIP bill, I wanted to learn why the default policies seemed to be aimed at denying CHIP coverage for children.

My visit taught me that there are more than a hundred of pages of "red tape" policies for applying to Children's Medicaid or CHIP. A single CHIP application must go through a 15-20 step process in order to be approved. At every step in the process, there is an opportunity for human error. At every step in the process, problems and questions can arise that jeopardize health coverage for a child — even if that child meets every eligibility requirement.

Too often, the default policy is to kick a child off CHIP instead of keeping them on, and that's a problem. That's not what we intended when we created CHIP, and that's not how it has to be.

After my visit, I drafted several riders for the state budget to simplify the enrollment policies for CHIP. Those riders were accepted by House Appropriations Chairman Warren Chisum.

Unless those riders stay on the budget, and until the Legislature and the Health and Human Services Commission commits to permanently simplifying CHIP enrollment policies, we will fail to do what we set out to do at the start of session:

Ensure our children receive the health coverage they deserve.

Coleman (D-Houston) was one of the original authors of the bill that created the Children's Health Insurance Program in 1999 and authored the Children's Medicaid simplification bill in 2001, which eliminated restrictive barriers to children's Medicaid in Texas.