Oregon just became the first state to approve a program that will extend health insurance to all children under the age of 6even if their family's income doesn't qualify them for Medicaid, the Washington Post reports.
The state's Department of Human Services gave the green light to the "Children's Health Insurance Program," which will cover all children under the age of 6 who live in the state with their parents, regardless of their family's income.
The program is set to go into effect Jan.
1, 2018, and will be paid for with existing tax funds from oil and gas production.
Other states, including New Mexico, are applying for similar changes.
The initiative is part of a larger effort by the WKKF nonprofit group to make child care more affordable.
"It's a perfect example of a market failure," the executive director of the Prenatal-to-3 Policy Impact Center at Vanderbilt University tells the Post.
"Thankfully, states are innovating new models to transform and expand child carelike New Mexico, which is using existing tax funds from oil and gas production to make child care free for one year for almost all of the state's children."
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