S-Chip on the Shoulder

Yes, it's true: George Bush hates America's children. As if the president wasn't unpopular already (his "disapproval rating" is hovering around 66%), Bush decides to veto a bill that would expand the State Children's Health Insurance Program, started in 1997 to fund health care for low-income children who fall above the poverty line and are thus not eligible for Medicaid. The new bill, which passed with bipartisan support in the House and Senate, calls for an increase in funding of $35 billion over five years for the program.

It's time to wake up: the war in Iraq is costing $1.8 billion a week, which makes the SCHIP funding a meager 5 months' worth. Unlike that war money -- which comes not out of the budget but emergency funding measures -- the SCHIP funding would actually be paid for by raising taxes, the cigarette tax, that is. Fund health care for those who need it, and decrease costs to the health care system by discouraging smoking -- almost sounds like a no brainer, huh?

Sure, the above treatment of the SCHIP debate boils it down into black and white. So let's consider Bush's argument, laid out in a speech to the Lancaster, Pa. Chamber of Commerce:

"The policies of the government ought to be, help poor children and to focus on poor children. And the policies of the government ought to be, help people find private insurance, not federal coverage. And that's where the philosophical divide comes in. I happen to believe that what you're seeing when you expand eligibility for federal programs is the desire by some in Washington, D.C. to federalize health care. I don't think that's good for the country. I believe in private medicine. I believe in helping poor people -- which was the intent of S-CHIP, now being expanded beyond its initial intent. I also believe that the federal government should make it easier for people to afford private insurance. I don't want the federal government making decisions for doctors and customers. (Applause.)"

Bush basically has two points, which are essentially the same thing: 1) SCHIP was started to fund health care for poor children, and expanding its mandate will go beyond covering the poor; it will draw in people who can already afford private insurance, and 2) expanding SCHIP is a step toward socialized medicine.

The first thing that Bush obscures is that America already has a program to fund health care for people below the poverty line; it's called Medicaid. Those kids are covered no matter what. SCHIP was started because health care costs became so high that even people who made twice as much as the federal poverty level (FPL is $20,650 a year) were unable or unwilling to insure their children. You've got to look at the phenomenal increase in health care costs in the past 7 seven years. Back in 2000, yearly family premiums on health insurance cost on average $6,450, which represented about 19% of the income of a family of four living at twice the 2000 federal poverty line. Now, with health care rates gone up 78% to $11,480, a family of four who is living at three times the poverty line ends up having to fork over that same share of their income: 19%. It was these families, who spend nearly a fifth of their yearly income on health care, that SCHIP was originally targeting, so raising the ceiling for coverage wouldn't necessarily mean expanding it "beyond its original intent." Even so, a recent study by the Urban Institute referenced on fact-check.org estimates that under the new SCHIP proposal, 70% of the children covered will still come from families that make under 200% of the federal poverty line.

As for Bush claiming that the program will cover families who make up to $83,000, it was a bit of a stretch. Because the SCHIP legislation is unspecific as to what constitutes "low-income children," states are allowed to set their own cut-offs for coverage, which range from 140% (ND) to 350% (NJ). New York State recently made a request to expand coverage up to families making $82,600 a year, which would be exactly 400% of the FPL. As within its power defined by law, the Bush Administration denied NY's request to increase the ceiling, so Bush's real concern is that future administrations might allow such expansions in SCHIP coverage.

The President's second objection, though essentially the same as his first is, as he puts it, "philosophical"; he is opposed to the government providing public health care to its citizens. Although I suspect he is really more concerned about the enormous amount of money to be made by private insurers (or to be lost in a socialized system), I'd like to take on the philosophical argument for a moment. I'm assuming that for him the philosophy behind his view is preserving "freedom of choice" and keeping the government out of our lives; to me it has to do with whether you consider health care a human right or something to make money off. When you look at our health care system today -- the skyrocketing premiums, the small businesses unable to keep up pace with increasing costs -- you've got to wonder why it is so intensely important that not only do we provide health care, but that we be able to make money off it. If anything, a socialized system (unlike the tax breaks and health savings accounts that Bush and other Republicans propose) would allow people to spend their money on other goods and services, which would still help grow other sectors of the economy.

Which brings me to my final tirade, which I assure you has nothing to do with SCHIP. The Dept. of Labor today released its latest report on job growth; the economy added 200,000 new jobs in the past two months, which gave the financial world some hope that we might not be hitting a recession after all. The detail that caught my eye, hidden behind all the statistics and measured optimism, was that the majority of these job gains were seen in health care and education. This is just a theory, but what if the root cause of all those new jobs was actually immigration? After all, a higher population demands more teachers and more health care professionals to serve it. If a connection actually exists (studies could try to show a regional correlation between immigration and job creation in education and health care), it could be crucial the immigration issue. We already know that immigrants (especially illegal ones) help the economy by bringing down the prices of goods (they also bring down the price of labor, which is good or bad depending on who you ask), but what if immigrants actually helped create jobs rather than "stealing them from working Americans"?

I wonder if that would change anyone's "philosophy."