Another Recap Of SCHIP

Investor's Business Daily runs an op-ed piece about the SCHIP bill that just passed the House that's a good summary of the issue. I hate to sound like a broken record, but this is a terrible piece of legislation, so I'm going to keep chanting about it until it goes down in flames.

Let's review. The State Children's Health Insurance Program was intended to provide insurance coverage for children of low-income families that couldn't afford it on their own. No one in their right mind would oppose that.

But SCHIP has become something entirely different.

The new bill would be funded through a huge new tobacco tax, and would expand the program to make more people eligible for benefits. Some points of note:
- more low-income families are smokers than high-income families
- families earning as much as $83,000 per year would be eligible
- illegal aliens would be eligible
- almost 700,000 adults are already covered by this 'children's' program, and more would be added
- the advertised price tag of the program would be $60 billion, but it would end up being far, far higher in the long run
- for every 10 children enrolled in SCHIP, six drop their private insurance

The summary: this is a huge new tax increase that will hammer low-income families to provide coverage to upper-middle class families and illegal aliens in the first step toward government-controlled universal health care.

Bush has pledged to veto it, and it will likely come down to that. The Senate is likely to have a 2/3 vote to override the veto, but the House looks much shakier on the override. This latest version passed 265-159 (290 are needed for the 2/3 override), whereas the last time around it was much, much closer. While IBD suggests some Republicans are now supporting the bill because they don't want to have to defend charges of being "against the children" next year. My hope is that some Republicans are calculating that a veto will not be overridden and are therefore trying to maintain their seats in relatively liberal congressional districts. The Democrats play that game all the time, so it seems logical that Republicans do, too. Only time will tell.

Regardless, the American people need to understand that this bill is NOT 'for the children', and voice their opposition.

There's my two cents.