Advocates, however, say the Legislature is going to have to put its money where its mouth is. By not fully funding the program last year, lawmakers left millions of matching federal dollars on the table.

"It won't do us one bit of good unless the state also comes up with some funds," Crompton said.

Lawmakers on Friday did approve a bill that claims to open up some 3,000 additional slots in the state's CHIP program. Rather than allocate state money however, HB218, sponsored by Rep. James Dunnigan, R-Taylorsville, has proposed increasing existing fees to cover the additional children.

"The intent of this bill is to allow us to cover children who are unable to get it (the CHIP program) because it is capped," said Dunnigan, an insurance agent. "It asks those that are in the CHIP program to pay a little bit more."

As approved Friday, HB218 raises co-payments by $2 (from $3 to $5) for items such as emergency-room visits and urgent-care services for the poorest CHIP families. For the families making between $30,000 and $40,000 a year, the bill requires annual deductibles and increases co-payments in many areas, including prescription drugs.

The health department, which administers CHIP, is grateful for Dunnigan's attention to the program, but is concerned about pricing low-income families out of CHIP, Sundwall said.

Health officials also say Dunnigan is being too optimistic when he says HB218 will make CHIP available to 3,000 more children. More likely, Sundwall said, the bill will simply cover rising health-care costs over the next year, preventing that number of slots from being cut from the program.

The bill received a vote of 53-17 in the House, though some lawmakers expressed concern about the details and the way in which the legislation came about.

HB218, in its current form, has yet to have a full public hearing. The bill began as a measure to create a full-time CHIP ombudsmen to work with parents and administrators of the program. That proposal, sponsored by Rep. Douglas Aagard, R-Kaysville, passed favorably out of the House Health and Human Services Committee, but Dunnigan replaced Aagard's measure with his own on the House floor.

"This bill has not had a vetting of a public hearing; there's a lot of concern about it," said Rep. David Litvack, D-Salt Lake. "I think we're jumping the gun in moving this forward."

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E-mail: awelling@desnews.com