The current brouhaha surrounding the State Children’s Health Insurance Program offers a revealing glimpse into the state of political dialogue in America. Reading the typical newspaper leaves the impression that the forces of evil, incarnate in President Bush, are arrayed against angels of light, commonly known as Democrats and moderate Republicans. The President’s veto of the pending legislation has elicited typical recriminations from the honorable side. Taking his heavenly gloves off, Senator John Kerry claimed that the veto "jeopardized health care for millions of poor children" and vowed to "override this cynical, callous vote." Covering bare knuckles with brass, New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson called the President’s veto "irresponsible…outrageous…simply immoral."
Such hyperbole is designed to create the impression that the President’s veto ended the entire program, which is simply not true. "Congress has passed and the President has signed legislation continuing the program at current spending levels until mid-November," according to the AP, providing enough time for the Democrats to override the veto or for a compromise to be reached. The veto has not removed a single child from health insurance coverage. Everyone agrees the program will continue at higher than current funding levels. Good grief, can we allow the sulfur to cool? Is it possible to have a fair and honest discussion nowadays? To paraphrase Joe Friday, "Can we just have the facts ma’am?"
As the Associated Press reported on October 3rd, "The SCHIP program, enacted in 1997, is designed to subsidize health coverage for families that earn too much to qualify for Medicaid but not enough to afford private insurance…Most states now cap eligibility to families whose income is less than twice the government poverty level, or $41,228 [annual income] for a family of four in 2006. New Jersey caps eligibility at 3 1/2 times the poverty level. New York wants to cap it at four times the poverty level," or $82,465. The bill recently vetoed by President Bush would have raised the eligibility level in all states to three times the poverty mark, some $61,842 per family of four, while New Jersey would stick with the higher standard or 3 1/2 times the government mandated poverty line, or $72,149. New York still must apply for waivers to put the limit at $82,465.
President Bush wants to boost spending for SCHIP approximately 20%, while the Democratic-led Congress wants a whopping 140% increase. The President’s argument against the current proposed legislation is that it is a thinly disguised giant leap toward universal health insurance resulting in taxpayer funding of health coverage for multiplied middle class children. Worse, many states have used the current program to insure adults, something the President wants to largely eliminate, bringing the program back to its original target of children in poor families.
The debate is about whether government should pay health insurance costs for middle-class kids, a straightforward, easy-to-understand formulation curiously missing in most news accounts of this fracas. The answer is, of course, no. Here’s why. First, families earning $61,000 annually can afford children’s health insurance. A few clicks on the Blue Cross website reveals that a 7 year-old boy and his 5 year-old sister can be covered, in Riverside County, California, for between 1.5% and 3% of that $61,000 income. For families with the right financial priorities, that is well within reach. Second, "most children in these higher-income families, unsurprisingly, are already covered by private insurance," according to Grace-Marie Turner, founder and President of the Galen Institute, a free-market-oriented health policy research organization. Again coming as no shock, the Congressional Budget Office estimates that about two million children now covered by private insurance would switch to the new and improved SCHIP, effectively forcing taxpayers to subsidize middle-class family’s improved lifestyles. Third, every household enrolled in the SCHIP program becomes beholden to the government, a dependent condition that is rarely reversed. How many more wards of the state do we want to create?
Invariably, social welfare given to Americans who can and should support themselves does more harm than good. The President needs to stand his ground, clear-thinking Americans should lend him their support, and in any case the debate ought to turn on facts, not highly charged rhetoric.
Posted by Jerry Pomeroy in Health Insurance Debate, Politics