Just like he said he would, Bush has vetoed the law authorizing expansion of S-CHIP, meaning that millions of kids won’t be covered. Oh, but he’s not against providing health care for kids, oh no! He just wants his buddies in the insurance industry to have a piece of the pie:
The measure would provide $60 billion over the next five years, $35 billion more than current spending and $30 billion more than the president proposed. Mr. Bush and his backers argue that the bill would be a step toward federalization of health care, and that it would steer the program away from its core purpose of providing insurance for poor children and toward covering children from middle-class families. The White House has rejected as “preposterous” any suggestion that Mr. Bush does not care about the welfare of poor children.
Later, in an appearance before the Lancaster Chamber of Commerce and Industry, Mr. Bush expanded on his reasons for vetoing the bill. “It is estimated that if this program were to become law, one out of every three persons that would subscribe to the new expanded Schip would leave private insurance,” the president said. “The policies of the government ought to be to help poor children and to focus on poor children, and the policies of the government ought to be to help people find private insurance, not federal coverage. And that’s where the philosophical divide comes in.”
Yes, because his administration has been such a boon for poor children. Really, they’ve got a special place in the hearts of the Bushies. Those lucky duckies!
Lucky, indeed. Because Bush isn’t just vetoing an increase in funding for the program, he’s tightening the eligibility rules so much that many of the kids who are currently insured will have to be booted off the rolls:
In their legal challenges, the eight states contend that the new eligibility rules, which went into effect in August and limit coverage to children living at or below 250 percent of the poverty level, will either force out children in the program or leave tens of thousands without coverage who would be eligible.
In August, federal health officials informed states that they could no longer receive federal matching funds for children in families living above 250 percent of the poverty level, except under special conditions that the states say would be almost impossible to meet. Three weeks ago the federal health officials denied a request by New York to insure more children by covering those in families with incomes up to 400 percent of the poverty rate, or $82,600 for a family of four.
“Despite every effort to negotiate in good faith, the Bush administration did nothing but put roadblocks and poison pills in our path,” Governor Spitzer said at a news conference yesterday. “The president was out of touch with the reality on the ground.”
New York will be joined by Maryland, Illinois and Washington in its suit against the federal government, while New Hampshire, Arizona and California will be filing amicus briefs. New Jersey — whose governor estimates that 10,000 children will lose coverage under the new rules — is filing a separate suit.
I’m home sick today, and I was able to listen to the Brian Lehrer Show on public radio. The first segment dealt with the S-CHIP (audio here). The guests were Elisabeth Ryden Benjamin, director of the New York Healthcare Restructuring Initiatives at the Community Services Society, and Ben Zycher, senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute. As you can imagine, Benjamin and Zycher did not agree on the merits of the expansion, but overall I felt that Benjamin had actually done the research, while Zycher more or less parroted a party line and did not display much actual expertise in insurance policy.
One thing that I found very interesting was that while Zycher kept touting Health Savings Accounts and tax credits for the purchase of private insurance, Benjamin kept pointing out that each of those alternatives would wind up costing the government MORE than simply expanding S-CHIP to cover children from families up to 400% of the poverty line (which, incidentally, is not adjusted by cost of living. So a family of four can live quite well on $80,000 somewhere like Mississippi, not so much in New York City). Moreover, Benjamin pointed out that the HSA option would result in a higher percentage of people abandoning private insurance than would S-CHIP. Which is what they’re supposed to be concerned about, right? Though I suspect that someone with a connection to the administration would be making some money managing those accounts; that has to explain why they push them so much.
So, when it comes right down to it, this isn’t really about the expense. But I think it *is* about making sure that government health insurance remains something that poor people get. Not because Bush wants to help poor people, but because he and his crowd, who would love nothing more than to dismantle all of FDR’s social programs, want to be sure that government health insurance maintains the stigma of being something, like welfare, that poor people — and in particular, poor brown and black people — get and middle-class people don’t. Because we’ve seen with Social Security what happens when you get middle-class people used to the idea of entitlement to social programs. And they sure as hell don’t want middle-class people getting used to the idea that they deserve to have government-provided health insurance in exchange for their taxes. Unfortunately for them, momentum for this very idea is building.
See also bean, who makes the following observation:
Seems like there’s something of a pattern emerging in Bush’s vetoes: his first veto was of a stem cell bill, and this (his fourth) is of a health insurance plan for kids. Seems to me that though Bush talks a big game on supporting a culture of life, his vetoes speak otherwise: they portend sickness and suffering for millions more Americans. He talks the talk, but in this (and so many other areas) he just doesn’t walk the walk.