The State Children's Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) was created in 1997 to address the needs of those families in the United States whose earnings are too high for them to qualify for health insurance coverage under the national Medicaid system but who do not earn enough to be able to afford private insurance. Specifically, the program was created to address the growing issue of children in the nation with no health insurance that were, as a consequence, receiving sub-standard health care or no health care whatsoever.

The passage of the State Children's Health Insurance Program represented the largest expansion of government-provided health insurance coverage in the United States since the formation of the Medicaid program in 1965. The SCHIP coverage had been extended to some 6 million children in the United States by 2005 at which time each state had a federally approved plan of administration for SCHIP in place.

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