President Obama Signs SCHIP bill

As of 1:30 pm PST (4:30 EST) today, February 4th, President Obama signed the House's bill HR2 into law. The bill was unchanged from the Senate version passed last week so the Senate's amendments were included. The law contains premium subsidies long advocated by NAHU, which is believed to help mitigate potential "fall-out" (whereby individuals opt out of other coverage to go onto the SCHIP plan) by allowing states to create, expand and improve premium-assistance programs for employer-coverage. Going forward, NAHU expects to develop model legislation to help create new premium assistance programs in states that don't already have programs in place and to improve upon states' plans that are already in place.