The 20,000 chocolate chips were piled inside a foot-high plastic container, with a message for Utah’s senior senator scrawled on the outside in permanent marker: “One chocolate chip for every child waiting for Senator Hatch to do the right thing.”
Each chip, explained Katie Matheson, with the group Alliance for a Better Utah, represented one Utah child covered by the Children’s Health Insurance Program — known as CHIP. The sugary delivery was meant, she said, “to sweeten the deal” as supporters lobby Sen. Orrin Hatch and others to vote for its survival.
The federal and state program helps subsidize wellness exams, immunizations, doctors visits, prescriptions and other forms of health care for nearly 20,000 Utah children — and about 9 million around the country.