The U.S. Senate prepares to debate the Health Insurance Program (CHIP) Reauthorization Act of 2009 and Senator Jay Rockefeller (D-WV) is urging his colleagues to waste no time in passing legislature that would provide health insurance to nearly 11 million of the nation’s poorest children, including 4.1 million children who would be newly insured.

“Starting this afternoon, the Senate will begin debate on a bill that has the potential to alter the lives of millions of America’s poorest children,” Rockefeller said yesterday. “Providing children with health insurance should not be a Democratic or Republican issue. This is about all of us, listening to the better angels of our nature and doing what is right and necessary.”

A press release sent to the Daily News states in preparation for the debate, Rockefeller released a section-by-section comparison of the three CHIP bills that have been considered in the Senate – the two bills from 2007 (H.R. 976 and H.R. 3963) as well as the current 2009 legislation (S. 275).

President Barack Obama is expected to pass the bills. Twice Bush vetoed similar bills.

“The CHIP reauthorization bill we are debating this week is virtually identical to the last CHIP bill that passed the Senate – and was vetoed by President Bush,” Rockefeller said. “I would urge my colleagues who supported CHIP in the past, to support it again. For 12 years, CHIP has given children who would otherwise be uninsured the chance to start life healthy. The millions of kids enrolled in CHIP now – and the millions more that could be enrolled – are counting on us to quickly pass this bill, and we absolutely need to do that.”

Families USA senior health policy analyst Jen-nifer Sullivan told the Daily News 19,400 West Virginia children could gain coverage as well as an estimated 47,100 children living in Kentucky.

“This is a big deal for working families,” Sullivan said.

Bill H.R. 2, passed by the House, could reduce the uninsured rate of children in West Virginia by 67-percent said Sullivan.

Close to seven million children from working families with too much income to qualify for Medicaid now get government-provided health care. The bill in-creases cigarette taxes by 61 cents, to a dollar a pack to pay the $32 billion cost of insuring four million more children.

The State’s Children Health Insurance Program (CHIP) was created in 1997 in response to the rising number of children nationally without health insurance. In a report released in November, Families USA (a national, nonprofit organization for health care consumers) found there are 8.6 million uninsured children in the U.S. The report was based on new Census Bureau data and reflects a three-year period from 2005 – 2007.

Titled “Left Behind: America’s Uninsured Chil-dren,” the report spotlights several details about the 8.6 uninsured children.

• One in nine children in America are uninsured.

• Uninsured children come from working families. The vast majority of uninsured children come from families where at least one parent works, and more than two-thirds of uninsured children live in households where at least one family member works full-time, year-round.

• 60.4 percent of the nation’s uninsured children come from low-income families who are likely eligible for Medicaid or CHIP.

• The five states with the largest number of uninsured children are Texas, California, Florida, New York and Georgia.

• The five states with the highest rates of uninsured children are Texas, Florida, New Mexico, Arizona and Nevada.

Sullivan said with the data does not include the number of uninsured children in 2008 but with the deepening recession driving up the unemployment rate, the numbers are bound to drastically increase. She estimates that for every one percent increase in the unemployment rate, an estimated 600,000 children become eligible for Med-icaid or CHIP.

Families USA reports there are 89,000 uninsured children living in Kentucky and 29,000 in West Vir-ginia.

“Doing what is right means making sure that children from families that are in this country legally should not have to wait five years for health care coverage,” Rockefeller said. “Five years is a lifetime to a child and the absence of health care in a child’s formative years can lead to long-term health problems or even worse.”