Good news for Ohio! For months advocates and policymakers have called foul on a directive released last year by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS). The directive limited the ability of states to expand their SCHIP programs to children in families above 250% of poverty. With Ohio looking to expand its SCHIP program to 300% of poverty, the directive took the wind out of the sails of the bipartisan effort to provide health care to more of Ohio’s children.

Last week the General Accountabiity Office and the Congressional Research Service released opinions stating that, under the Congressional Review Act, the August 17th directive should have been sent to Congress for review before being implemented.

The new legal opinions help to validate the perspective that the directive has illegally, abruptly and unilaterally changed longstanding SCHIP rules through a “backdoor” mechanism. By making these far-reaching and harmful changes through a mere letter to state officials, Governors, families, and others were left with no opportunity to comment on how they might damage children’s coverage.

In Ohio, the directive already has meant that 35,000 children will not be able to take advantage of the SCHIP expansion.

In light of the growing evidence of the illegality of the August 17th directive and its ongoing harm to Ohio, and other states, efforts to cover more uninsured children, we need to continue the effort to see that the directive is suspended until SCHIP reauthorization can be completed. It is only fair to the nation’s children that far-reaching decisions about which of them can be covered through SCHIP are addressed in a public, open debate, rather than through a backdoor process that illegally circumvented even the chance for Congress to provide input.