Home > Thinking Right > Archives > 2007 > August > 03
Friday, August 3, 2007
SCHIP bloat portends start of HillaryCare
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Do we really want to put middle-class children on welfare?
The U.S. House and Senate did that last week, approving a $50 billion expansion of the State Children’s Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) that makes 71 percent of the children in the country eligible for taxpayer-subsidized medical care. Included are “children” up to the age of 21, whether they are in this country legally or not. The president has promised to veto both the $50 billion House version and a $35 billion Senate version passed Thursday night. He’d recommended a $5 billion expansion, or 20 percent.
Over the decade since the program was created in 1997, it’s cost federal taxpayers about $40 billion. The House would expand that to almost $130 billion over the next 10, extending eligibility to families of four with incomes of up to $83,000. HillaryCare, here we come.
SCHIP is the federal-funding portion of PeachCare. That’s a taxpayer-subsidized program that entices eligible parents to drop or forgo employer-offered medical coverage for their children in favor of the cheap, and usually better, coverage taxpayers provide. In Georgia, a family of four with income in excess of $48,000 per year can get top-drawer medical coverage for as little as free (children under 6 are covered at no cost). The maximum any family would pay, regardless of the number of children, is $70 per month.
When PeachCare and programs like it were created less than a decade ago, the intent of Congress was to offer coverage to children in families with incomes of 200 percent of the federal poverty level, or $41,300 for a family of four. Georgia, flush with money, upped that to 235 percent. The Legislature this year considered aligning eligibility with the program’s design intent, which is where most other states are. But the governor and Legislature could never get their act together.
The Georgia program was in financial distress, prompting legislative action. Federal taxpayers provide 73.3 percent, Georgians 26.7.
Nationally, 37 percent of all children are in families with incomes of up to twice the federal poverty level, but 45 percent are in taxpayer-subsidized plans, either Medicaid or PeachCare-like programs. The House bill would make 90 percent of the children who now have private health insurance eligible for public assistance.
As the Congressional Budget Office has noted, up to half the children signed up for PeachCare are the result of parents dropping or forgoing private health insurance coverage to buy the better and cheaper subsidized coverage.
The Washington-based Heritage Foundation notes that in 1998, 28 percent of children were covered by Medicaid, the taxpayer-provided medical care program for the poor, or by PeachCare-like programs. The rest either had private health insurance or lacked coverage. In 2005, 45 percent had shifted to taxpayer coverage. By 2012, it projects that only 29 percent of children won’t be on public assistance.
The new House bill also eliminates the existing law requirement that states verify citizenship, thus denying benefits to people in the country illegally. Admittedly, Georgia did a lousy job of verifying eligibility, but that was nonetheless the law. “The last thing we need to do,” said U.S. Rep. Lynn Westmoreland (R-Ga.), “is to create a new incentive to enter this country illegally.”
The House bill also lifts the spending, originally capped to the funds Congress authorized, so that PeachCare becomes an entitlement. “There’s no question this is a huge expansion of eligibility, and the removal of the lid on spending turns it from a grant program into an entitlement,” said Westmoreland.
During the PeachCare debate, few Republicans in Georgia seemed to get that the legislation proposed by House Speaker Glenn Richardson would return eligibility for all new enrollees in the program to its original intent.
The stakes always have been the race between public- and private-sector solutions. Congress has just checked the private sector while greatly expanding the public. Bush has, of course, to veto it.
Don’t put the middle class on welfare. Don’t entice responsible adults to dependency.
Permalink | Comments (136) | Post your comment | Categories: Column
