Called KidsCare in Arizona, CHIP now covers more than 23,000 children across our state. It has helped bring the rate of Arizona children with health insurance to a historic high at 92.7 percent. Instead of celebrating, families have been thrown into uncertainty as the fate of their children’s health care hangs in the balance.

With no immediate congressional action in sight, state Medicaid officials are preparing to implement a contingency plan to ensure that nearly 24,000 children of Arizona working poor do not lose their health care coverage this coming month.

Unlike other states, Arizona law says KidsCare will be frozen the day federal funding drops below 100 percent. Arizona is one of 12 states in the country whose CHIP program is paid for entirely by the federal government, which was a major reason we were able to get KidsCare reopened. Over 22,000 children from working Arizona families are now covered through KidsCare, showing us just how needed a program like CHIP is in our state.

A family of four can bring in more than $60,000 annually to be considered low income for the state’s recently expanded voucher program, allowing them to access more funds to attend private school. But to be considered low income for various other state programs, like ones that allow the poor to buy food or basic necessities like toilet paper, the line is much lower, meaning fewer people qualify for help.

While the big ticket and politically charged budget items get most of the attention, there are hundreds of items that get little to no fanfare. Following are a few of those items.

The GOP bill, backed by House Speaker Paul Ryan and President Donald Trump, would effectively halt Arizona’s 2013 Medicaid expansion.

Federal officials have approved Arizona's plan to allow additional low-income families in need of affordable health insurance to enroll their children for coverage for services in September.

As the debate raged over the restoration of KidsCare, a federally funded health insurance program for low-income children, Gov. Doug Ducey remained firmly on the fence.

Low-income Arizona families in need of affordable health insurance for their children can begin receiving coverage in September under a new plan offering relief for the working poor.

Arizona is going to restore a program it shelved six years ago to provide health care to the children of the working poor.