(CNSNews.com) - Enacted 10 years ago, the State Children's Health Insurance Program (SCHIP), which targets low income families who do not qualify for Medicaid, is set to expire this year, and lawmakers are exploring ways to help insure those still not covered.

"We can say without equivocation that [with SCHIP] we have made a contribution to ensuring that children have better coverage and more access to healthcare than they had before," former Sen. Tom Daschle (D-S.D.) said at the Center for American Progress in Washington, D.C. on Thursday.

Daschle noted that "21.6 million children today are provided coverage through either the Medicaid program or the SCHIP program. We find that there [are] approximately 43 million children who are covered by the insurance provided through family employers.

"About three million children are insured with individual coverage, but 9.2 million children today remain uninsured and eligible," he added.

Rep. John Dingell (D-Mich.) said the program should be expanded to cover more of the uninsured, arguing that "healthcare should be a right, not a privilege."

"SCHIP is one of the best ideas to come out of Congress," Dingell said.

"What's interesting is how little this exercise is going to cost," he added. "The nation is going to find that it will cost about $3.50 a day or less - that's less than the cost of a Starbucks Frappaccino - to provide a child with health insurance."

Dingell said reauthorizing SCHIP is only a temporary solution, as the ultimate goal should be universal healthcare coverage.

"This is something for us to do while we wait for a White House and an administration that is supportive of universal healthcare," he said.

"Healthcare that is available to all Americans is really a superb investment," Dingell argued. "It is not just a humanitarian effort, but it is something that is good for the country economically."

In the view of Nina Owcharenko, a senior health policy analyst at the Heritage Foundation, SCHIP is "only putting a band-aid on the problem. The problem is what's happening in the healthcare system as a whole."

"There are other policy changes that can be made that will help children and their families obtain health insurance," she told Cybercast News Service. "Policymakers should really look beyond SCHIP and figure out what it is about the system as a whole that is preventing these children from getting coverage."

Owcharenko noted that "the president did put out a universal proposal and he's talked about replacing the existing tax structure with a better, more equitable tax approach to purchasing health insurance."

She said the difference between the approaches to coverage is between government-funded coverage and increasing access to private coverage.

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