WASHINGTON – The race is on in Congress to extend federal health care funding for nine million children before states run out of money for the program over the next few months.

Democrats say the effort could eventually be delayed by partisan politics.

A Senate committee Wednesday overwhelmingly approved a bipartisan funding measure for the Children’s Health Insurance Program, in contrast with a House committee version expected to be endorsed on a majority Republican-only vote.

Democrats said Republicans complicated the prospects of the funding extension passing into law by tying the House version to a Medicare premium increase and cuts to an Affordable Care Act prevention program.

“The opportunity existed for a bipartisan compromise,” said New Jersey Congressman Frank Pallone, ranking Democrat on the House Energy and Commerce committee.

But linking continued funding for CHIP to controversial changes, he said, would make the proposal “contentious” and lead to “more delay and possibly no action until the end of the year.”

If the debate drags on that long, states and some low-income children could be in trouble.

Health officials in states are concerned about losing federal funds, which pay for most of the medical coverage after Congress missed a deadline to renew funding last Saturday.

That left the program without funding for the upcoming year, raising fears among healthcare advocates that some states may have to cut back coverage for children and health services to pregnant women, who are also covered by the program.

Most states have said they have enough leftover funding to carry them through early next year.

But some say they will run out of money sooner, and others are beginning to figure out what they’ll do.

“As it stands right now, we calculate funding for CHIP in Mississippi will last until the end of April 2018,” Erin Barham, Missississippi Deputy Administrator for Communications for Mississippi Division of Medicaid, wrote in an email.

As of the end of September, there were 48,165 children in Mississippi on the Children’s Health Insurance Program and 31,377 children in Quasi-CHIP, according to the Mississippi Division of Medicaid.

Quasi-CHIP dates to the implementation of the Affordable Care Act, when the income limit to qualify for Medicaid was raised, Barham explained. The eligibility for Medicaid also shifted to the use of modified adjusted gross income (MAGI). Both of these factors meant that some children who were on CHIP suddenly qualified for Medicaid.

“These are the Quasi-CHIP kids,” Barham wrote.

But those children, she said, are still funded by the CHIP program, based on current state formula.

“The Quasi-CHIP category is funded with the CHIP federal match, and right now that’s 100 percent,” Barham wrote.

How low-income children are covered varies from state to state, depending the structure of their CHIP programs, said Samantha Artiga, a Medicaid expert at the Kaiser Family Foundation. 

When the potential funding crisis impacts states also varies, depending on how much they have left over from the past year.

Some states could run out of funding this year. Twenty-seven others face a possible dilemma between January and April of next year, according to the federal Medicaid and CHIP Payment and Access Commission. 

The bipartisan Senate funding bill was negotiated in the Senate Finance Committee by Republican chairman Orrin Hatch of Utah and the panel’s top Democrat, Ron Wyden of Oregon. It would fund the program for five years, with the amount declining after the first two years.  

Hatch, who worked with the late Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., to create the CHIP program in 1997, called it a “prime example of what government can accomplish when it works together.”

In the House, Republicans proposed the identical funding plan, but financed it by requiring wealthy seniors  to begin paying Medicare premiums, a move opposed by AARP as well as Democrats.

The proposal would also disallow lottery winners from getting Medicaid, cut funding for community clinics, and shortened the grace period for people who don’t pay their Affordable Care Act premiums from 90 to 30 days.

Congressman Joe Barton, R-Texas, said it is “reasonable to find cuts to offset funding for the CHIP program.”

Meridian Star reporter Michael Neary contributed to this report.