Health Care: Letting The SCHIPs Fall
Earlier this summer, Congress passed bills that would increase five-year funding for the State Children's Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) by $50 billion in the House and $35 billion in the Senate. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) announced this week that the two chambers had reached a compromise, and the House would vote on a modified version of the bill.
SEPTEMBER 20, 2007 | by Faiz Shakir, Amanda Terkel, Satyam Khanna, Matt Corley, Ali Frick, and Jeremy Richmond Contact Us | Tell-a-Friend | Archives | Permalink |
HEALTH CARE
Letting The SCHIPs FallEarlier this summer, Congress passed bills that would increase five-year funding for the State Children’s Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) by $50 billion in the House and $35 billion in the Senate. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) announced this week that the two chambers had reached a compromise, and the House would vote on a modified version of the bill. SCHIP currently provides insurance for six million children; the planned expansion would provide coverage to an additional four million children who would otherwise be uninsured. SCHIP, a joint federal-state partnership that covers children without health insurance, is “widely regarded as one of the country’s greatest social policy successes.” A Senate report found that after the implementation of SCHIP, “the percentage of uninsured children declined from 13.9% in 1997 to 8.9% in 2005.” Despite the overwhelming majority of Americans firmly supporting greater funding, President Bush has threatened a veto. A veto would endanger the sustainability of the program, as the current SCHIP authorization is set to expire on Sept. 30. BUSH THREATENS VETO: Bush has attempted to halt the expansion of SCHIP in two ways: he has threatened an outright veto of the program’s federal funding and attempted to subvert individual states’ ability to set their own guidelines for participation in SCHIP. White House Press Secretary Dana Perino recently promised that the President would only consider signing legislation if it conformed to his request for “$5 billion more over five years.” By blocking states’ capability to determine eligibility in SCHIP, the administration is undermining state’s ability to reach uninsured children. “The administration regularly touted the system’s flexibility as the key to its efficiency and a model for other federal health programs.” Now the administration is attacking SCHIP for that same flexibility. It has also attached qualifications for federal funding that are, by all reasonable standards, impossible to meet. 61 CENTS TO INSURE FOUR MILLION: The expanded SCHIP program would be financed almost entirely by a marginal increase in taxes on tobacco products. Bush has expressed his opposition to the bill largely on ideological terms, apparently finding an increase on tobacco products to be at greater odds with his ideology than four million uninsured American children. Reports have shown, however, that “higher state taxes on smokers have produced sharp declines in consumption. The amount of decline in smoking is directly tied to the size of the tax increase.” Even Bush’s own “Cancer Panel” recommended that Bush no longer “acquiesce to the demands of the industries that encourage” the “disease and death caused by tobacco use.” According to the American Medical Association, “for each 10 percent increase in the price of cigarettes, youth smoking is reduced by 7 percent, and overall consumption by 4 percent.” Furthermore, the public overwhelmingly supports raising tobacco taxes, by a margin of 67 percent to 28 percent. STATES SPEAK OUT IN SUPPORT: Governors from 28 states, both Democrats and Republicans, recently signed onto a letter written by Govs. Arnold Schwarzenegger (R-CA) and Eliot Spitzer (D-NY), chastising Bush for his stance on SCHIP. They wrote that “your administration has repeatedly modified existing Medicaid and SCHIP rules, harming states’ capacity to help you achieve our shared objectives. The recently-proposed SCHIP rules will reverse longstanding agreements with the states and reduce the number of children who receive health care.” Spitzer has also also threatened to sue the federal government “on charges that new regulations on children’s health insurance violate an existing program that covers children from lower-income families.” Bush’s divisive stance on SCHIP comes in the face of bipartisan support at both the state and federal levels. The Senate bill passed 68-31, with enough votes to override a presidential veto. A bipartisan letter from the Governor’s Association wrote, “It is important that the program allow Governors room within which to establish coverage policies that work best in their state,” and “a timely and full reauthorization of the State Children’s Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) is the Governors’ highest health care priority this year.”
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Senate approves a measure aimed at curbing wartime contracting abuse by protecting “witnesses who expose corruption and waste.“ LOUISIANA: “Tens of thousands of people” are expected to descend on the town of Jena to protest “excessive criminal charges against six black teenagers involved in a schoolyard brawl.” More about the Jena 6 HERE. MARYLAND: Maryland Senate President “said yesterday that he would not support legislation to legalize same-sex marriage or civil unions.” WISCONSIN: New legislation would allow health care professionals to “refuse to dispense emergency contraception to sexual assault victims if it offends their religious beliefs.” THINK PROGRESS: Australian Prime Minister John Howard’s party bans members from Al Gore’s global warming speeches. CONSCIENCE OF A LIBERAL: New York Times columnist Paul Krugman starts his own blog. TPM MUCKRAKER: In testimony, a former Justice Department official contradicts the Director of National Intelligence on FISA. “I’m the decision maker.” “People listen to Petraeus, not to me.” |
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