The Bad News On SCHIPP - Massive Health Care Increases

I've blogged about this before, but here's some more information for you to digest on the subject. Robert Robb writes in the Arizona Republic about the pending legislation to expand health care. Robb points out that the Democrats are spinning the bill as 'funding health insurance for low-income children', but that is not the case.

Check out the article for all the details, but here's the short version. No one is proposing to de-fund the current program. The debate centers around a huge new expansion being proposed by the Democrats. But, there is no expansion needed - many states didn't even use the initial funds for the program! The original intent of the SCHIPP program was to provide health care coverage for children of families earning less than $40,000, but since most states had extra money left over, they were given permission to fund coverage for children of families earning as much as $60,000, well into the middle class. But that's not all...in addition, there are adults getting coverage through this program, too: in Arizona, 56% of the "kids" in the program are actually adults!

So, not only does this program NOT need an expansion, it really should be cut back quite a bit. We all know that won't happen, but we should at least expect to not have to pay for a completely unnecessary expansion.

Speaking of which, how are the Democrats proposing to pay for this massive new entitlement? With a huge new tax on tobacco. But, Robb indicates that most smokers are in the low-income tax brackets, so the net effect of this bill is to tax the poor to give health care coverage for the middle class.

While it would be nice to have the middle class actually get the benefit of a tax for a change, I still think this is an awful bill, especially given the fact that the current funding level of the SCHIPP program is more than adequate. This is just another case of politicians throwing money -- your money -- at a 'problem' that isn't really a problem simply to make it look like they're accomplishing something. Don't buy it. Call your reps and tell them not to buy it, either.

UPDATE: the House just passed this legislation yesterday, largely along party lines, so call your Senators TODAY if you want to have any say in stopping this huge entitlement.

There's my two cents.