CHIP Expansion
On February 4, 2009, President Obama signed into law H.R. 2, the Children's Health Insurance Program (CHIP) Reauthorization Act of 2009. The legislation extends the CHIP program through FY 2013, expands funding to cover an additional 3.9 million uninsured children, and makes a number of reforms to the program. Note that the legislation does not include an earlier House provision that would have limited the "whole hospital" exception to the Stark law's self-referral prohibition to those hospitals with physician ownership or investment on January 1, 2009, and would have added significant new conditions to that exception for existing hospitals with physician ownership. A Senate Finance Committee summary is available here.
