West Virginia Expects To Spend Entire Federal CHIP Allotment Partly By Covering Children’s Mental Health Treatment

West Virginia might spend its entire federal CHIP allotment this year, in part by adding a mental health care benefit to the program, the Charleston Gazette reports. West Virginia CHIP program Director Sharon Carte said that her office is calculating the cost of providing "some" mental health care to children, but she cautioned that "conditions could change" by the end of the fiscal year and the state might not have the funds to provide such a benefit. Currently, mental health care for CHIP beneficiaries is funded by the state Department of Health and Human Resources; if those costs were covered by federal CHIP money, state funding could be allocated for "other," unspecified uses, the Gazette reports. Last year, the state returned nearly $9.6 million in unused CHIP funds to the federal government, and in 2000, the state gave back $14 million. According to critics at the time, the state was unable to use the entire allotments because it was slow to enroll children, unnecessarily cut children off from the program and sent "undecipherable correspondence" to children's parents. About 74% of West Virginia's 27,000 eligible children were enrolled in the CHIP program as of Jan. 23, the Gazette reports (Miller, Charleston Gazette, 2/14).