Silver Lake representative Los Angeles City Councilmember David Ryu sends this message about kids.

Today, the City Council unanimously stood with children’s health and demanded in a formal Resolution that Congress reauthorize the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP), a federal program which provides healthcare to over 9 million low-income children nationwide, over 1 million of which live in California. Funding for the program, passed in a bipartisan effort in 1997, lapsed on September 30 of this year.

Today, Councilmember Ryu released the following statement: “Today, City Council made a stand where Congress has been woefully absent - with children’s health and with common sense,” Councilmember Ryu said. “CHIP is a bipartisan program that has made affordable health care possible for millions of kids for 20 years. It’s lapse now does not reflect the state of the program’s success or significance, but rather the state of the 115th Congress.”

The Children’s Health Insurance Program was championed by then-First Lady Hillary Clinton before being introduced by Republican Senator Orrin Hatch and Democratic Senator Ted Kennedy and passed in 1997. It has been reauthorized four times before September 30 of this year. The program for helped lower the rate of uninsured children to a record low 3 percent in California and 5 percent nationally. Without federal funding, the majority of states will completely exhaust funding for children’s healthcare by March 2018. In California and four other states,

CHIP funds are expected to run out in early January. “If Congress allows CHIP to die, children will suffer - it’s that simple,” Councilmember Ryu said. “The City of Los Angeles knows just how devastating poverty can be on a child, and how badly needed programs like CHIP are. We urge Congress to take politics out of our children’s health and reinstate this program with full funding and without further delay.”

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Los Angeles City Councilmember David E. Ryu represents the 4th Council District which includes Griffith Park, Sherman Oaks, Toluca Lake, Hollywood, Hollywood Hills, Los Feliz, Silver Lake, Miracle Mile, Hancock Park, Windsor Square, Larchmont and portions of Koreatown and Van Nuys.