Come January, a lot of lower-income children around the state who need health insurance — 30,000 or more of them — may be left out in the cold.

That’s the estimated number of youngsters who will not have access to coverage by N.C. Health Choice for Children when it has to freeze enrollment at the first of the year. The program, which provides coverage for children of the working poor, has hit its ceiling of 71,000 children. That was the limit set in 1997 when Congress passed the law enabling states to establish the children’s insurance programs, which receive about three-quarters of their funding from federal dollars.

That the North Carolina program has reached capacity much sooner than expected shows two things. One is that it has been successful in reaching the children and their families who can benefit from it. The program targets families who earn too much to qualify for Medicaid, but don’t have access to employer-sponsored insurance, or can’t afford private policies.

The enrollment freeze also shows that the old census numbers and funding formulas used to establish the program were inadequate and greatly underestimated the needs. Along with suspect population numbers, the program’s surging enrollment may also reflect fluctuations in the state’s farming and manufacturing job base, as well as in increased immigration. While the government put the initial need at 71,000, program officials now say at least 100,000 would qualify, perhaps as many as 126,000.

That’s a lot of children who will be without ready access to health care, and a lot of families that may delay seeking medical treatment because they can’t afford another trip to the doctor.

But there is one possibility for a short-term reprieve. When Congress created the insurance program, it set a deadline of September 2000 for states to spend their initial allocation of funds. Right now, about $1.9 billion hasn’t been spent — and may not be, because some states apparently overestimated their needs. Under the original law, Congress has the option of redistributing that money to states that have met their enrollment cap. Congress now has to decide whether to do that, or give states more time to get their programs going.

While it would be wrong to take away funds needed by families in other states, it would be equally wrong to let those funds sit unused while children in North Carolina and other states that may soon hit their enrollment cap go without adequate health care.

Congress should make it a priority to direct funding to states that have a known need now — and North Carolina is certainly one of them. The funding formula itself needs revision, but meanwhile, take some of the available money and put it to use where children are waiting for coverage.