Outside of open enrollment, a special enrollment period allows you to enroll in an ACA-compliant plan (on or off-exchange) if you experience a qualifying life event.
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Home>Glossary>Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP)
Children's Health Insurance Program (CHIP)
What is CHIP (the Children's Health Insurance Program)?
The Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP) is a health coverage program created in 1997 to ensure that children would have health coverage even if their families couldn’t afford to pay for private health insurance.
In most states, CHIP provides low-cost health coverage to children in families with incomes too high to qualify for Medicaid. But some states integrated their Medicaid and CHIP into a single program with one income limit. You can click on a state on this map to see how CHIP is administered.
Income limits for CHIP eligibility vary by state (you can see details here for each state). In most states, the income limit for CHIP eligibility is at least 250% of the poverty level. And in New York, it extends to 400% of the poverty level (that amounts to $10,400 per month for a family of four in 20241).
Do families have to pay a premium for CHIP?
About half of the states have modest premiums or enrollment fees for CHIP.2 In most cases this applies to separate CHIP programs, but it also includes a few states that integrate CHIP with their Medicaid program3 (note that some states have eliminated their CHIP premiums since 2020).2
More than 7 million people are enrolled in CHIP nationwide.4 These are mostly children, but a few states also provide CHIP coverage to people who are pregnant5 (pregnant people have access to Medicaid in every state, with higher income limits than those that apply to other adults).
Because CHIP income limits tend to extend well into the middle class, it’s common for families enrolling in health coverage through the exchange to find that the parents qualify for premium subsidies to purchase private coverage, while the kids qualify for CHIP instead (or Medicaid, depending on income and how the state structures its coverage for children).
A family policy can include separate child premiums for up to a maximum of three children age 20 or younger. There is no charge for additional children age 20 or younger.