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Friday, September 21, 2007
More SCHIP: Revived but already dead
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
The Good News: House and Senate negotiators struck a deal on PeachCare’s parent program Friday that would expand the program by $35 billion.
The Bad News: President Bush already announced he’d veto it.
The final agreement, which still must pass the House and Senate, would insure the 6.6 million low-income children already enrolled in the program, known nationally as the States Children’s Health Insurance Program or SCHIP and locally as PeachCare. It also would as many as 4 million more kids by 2012.
The legislation would repeal President Bush’s order to the states forbidding them from expanding local SCHIP initiatives on their own.
The compromise bill encourages states to enroll children of parents who earn 200 percent of the federal poverty rate ($41,000 for family of four), but allows an expansion up to 300 percent ($62,000). The only adults allowed to get coverage through SCHIP are pregnant women. Parents and childless adults, now covered by some states, would be phased out of the program.
Bush has vowed to veto any SCHIP bill that greatly expands funding, saying it was a move toward socialized medicine. Bush said the program should continue to focus on children only, with eligibility capped at 200 percent, as the program was originally designed 10 years ago. Some states are now as high as 350 percent.
Still, the Democratic Congress continues pushing a bill Bush is sure to veto, believing that Democrats would still win a political points by portraying Republicans as virtually heartless in the 2008 election.
Broun and SCHIP: Another walk on the maverick side?
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
This week, U.S. Rep. Nathan Deal announced his sponsorship of a stop-gap measure to allow the continued funding of the federal-state children’s health insurance program.
It’s not an uncommon tactic in Washington. Democrats in Congress want to expand the program. The White House doesn’t. If two opposing sides can’t come to terms on the program, this kind of legislation would keep the program — called PeachCare in Georgia — going until a resolution is reached.
Deal’s suggestion would keep SCHIP funding at its current level for 18 months — until there’s a new resident in the White House.
Georgia has seven Republican members of Congress. Six, including Deal, have endorsed the measure.
U.S. Rep. Paul Broun has not — prompting rumors to fly that the Athens physician was ready to take another walk on the maverick side and oppose the entire concept of government-subsidized health insurance for children of the working poor.
Broun has bucked Republican consensus before — within a few hours of taking office in July, in fact. He voted in favor of legislation to bar federal prosecution of those who use marijuana for medicinal purposes in the 12 states that permit it.
So we called his office. And his spokesman said it was premature to say whether Broun was for — or against — his colleague’s SCHIP legislation. “Congressman Broun has not yet looked at the specifics of the legislation,” said John Kennedy, Broun’s director of communications.
Kennedy said his boss, who faces opposition next year in both a Republican primary and the general election, will make a decision early next week.
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