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News release

Nation’s Moms Call on Congress to Renew Funding for Children’s Health Insurance Program

November 13, 2014

Lisa Lederer, 202-371-1996

DC-Area Moms to Deliver Petition Signatures, Storybooks to Members of Congress
One Tuesday, Moms who are members of the online and on-the-ground grassroots organization MomsRising will deliver petitions with more than 20,000 signatures and books with stories from families across the country that urge the U.S. Senate to extend funding for the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP) through 2019. The moms will meet up before the delivery at:
 
10am, Tuesday November 18
Hart Senate Office Building Lobby (by the Calder statue)
Washington, DC
 
Funding for CHIP will expire next year unless Congress votes to extend it. Right now, more than 8 million children rely on the program for health insurance. Since it first went into effect in 1997, CHIP has helped reduce the number of uninsured children by half, from 14 percent to 7 percent.
 
The MomsRising storybook, Give Our Kids A Winning Hand: Continue Funding for the Children’s Health Insurance Program, contains more than 100 stories from across the country, including this one:
 
When my daughter was 19 months old, she had a sudden seizure and fell backwards while I was giving her a bath. I was alone with her and couldn’t leave her to dial 911, so I rushed out of my house calling for help, clutching my naked child who was seizing in my arms. 
 
Fortunately, my next-door neighbors were home and I fell to my knees and placed my child on the floor and prayed as they called for an ambulance. Her lips were already turning blue. She stopped seizing shortly thereafter and was unconscious for the next 35 minutes.
 
She was diagnosed with febrile seizures that day. She has had five other seizures since, each brought on by moderate fevers. Each one was just as frightening as the first. Another thing that was just as frightening for me? Being an unemployed single mom, attempting to start a business, and worrying about how I would pay the medical bills if I had to rush my girl to the hospital.
 
Thankfully, I was able to get her insured through the CHIP. This critical program provides health insurance for children of low- to- moderate income families like mine. It is imperative that this program stay in place to help others as it helped me.
- Sili, Florida
 
NOTE:  Sili Recio will be at the delivery and available to give interviews in Spanish.
 

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MomsRising.org is an on-the-ground and online grassroots organization of more than a million people who are working to increase family economic security, decrease discrimination against women and moms, and to build a nation where businesses and families can thrive. Established in 2006, MomsRising and its members are organizing and speaking out to improve public policy and to change the national dialogue on issues that are critically important to America’s families, including criminal justice reform, immigration policy reform, and gun safety. MomsRising is working for paid family and medical leave, affordable, high quality childcare and early learning, and for an end to the wage and hiring discrimination which penalizes women — particularly moms and women of color — and so many others. MomsRising advocates for access to healthy food for all kids, health care for all, earned sick days, and breastfeeding rights so that all children can have a healthy start. MomsRising maintains a Spanish language website: MamásConPoder.org. Sign up online at www.MomsRising.org — and follow us on our blog, and on Twitter and Facebook.