Children's Health Insurance.

ITEM: "The Children's Health Insurance Program has suddenly become a vehicle for an ideological struggle between President Bush and Congress over the future of the health care system," reported Robert Pear in the New York Times for August I. "But in the short term, members of both parties say, the broader outline of that struggle is likely to be reduced to a simple question: 'Are you for or against children.'"

ITEM: Syndicated columnist David Broder commented in the Houston Chronicle for July 31: "The Democrats have the easy side of the argument, promising to insure more kids from low-income families who are too well-off for Medicaid but not wealthy enough to afford private insurance policies."

ITEM: The Boston Globe for July 31 quoted Senator Edward Kennedy, "the Massachusetts Democrat who cosponsored the SCHIP [State Children's Health Insurance] legislation with [Utah GOP Senator] Hatch in 1997," asserting, "This is a matter of enormous importance." Continued Kennedy: "If we are interested in educating the children of this country, we have to make sure that children can hear the teacher, that children can see the blackboard."

ITEM: After SCHIP's approval by the House, the Washington Post reported on August 2: "The legislation would launch the most significant growth in federal health care in a decade, and Democrats hope it will fortify their members as they head home soon for the summer recess amid voter perceptions that they have accomplished little since taking control of Congress. 'This is the children's hour,' House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif) declared last night. 'We are able to meet our moral obligation to our children.'"

CORRECTION: When politicos in Washington start talking about how much they want to do for your kids, it's time to grab your children and your wallet. What the House Speaker called the "children's hour" could well lead to many years of pillaging of taxpayers. This proposed multi-billion dollar expansion of government health programs would inflict another wound on private insurance, and actually lead to poorer care for many children. Other potential side-effects include cutting programs for seniors and imposing higher taxes on the poor.

This is being done under the pretext of saving the State Children's Health Insurance Program (SCHIP), which is due to expire at the end of September. This scheme was instituted after the vaunted Hillary Care universal health coverage program ran aground and sank. SCHIP is a joint federal-state program that was sold under the premise that the government should subsidize health insurance for children who live in families that earn too much to qualify for Medicaid but not enough for private insurance. Federal taxes pay for about 70 percent of the program, with state taxes supplying the balance. States are permitted to set eligibility guidelines. Some already have dramatically expanded the intent and scope of the program, opting to supply coverage to families with incomes as much as four times above the designated poverty level.

This is the case in New York state, which permits coverage at 400 percent of official "poverty." As a result, under the SCHIP legislation that recently passed the House, families of four with incomes of more than $80,000 a year would be eligible for public assistance.

Enrolling Adults in Children's Program

A number of states--including many of the 14 states that have driven their programs into the red--have extended coverage to adults. In 2005, according to the Government Accountability Office, "Adults account for an average of 55% of enrollees in the shortfall states." So much for the "children's hour" balderdash. In Minnesota, for example, 87 percent of the program's enrollees in 2005 were adults. In Wisconsin and Arizona, there are also more insured adults than children in SCHIP.

From the picture painted by liberals, who also misleadingly equate insurance coverage with treatment, one would think there were tens of millions of American children suffering and dying for lack of care. Untrue. There are, points out Representative Joe Barton (R-Texas), "fewer than 1 million uninsured children in the United States between the 100 percent of poverty, which Medicaid covers, and 200 percent of poverty, which is the official poverty line for SCHIP. That's out of 78 million children."

A showdown is expected soon in Washington, as the more expensive and expansive House legislation needs to be reconciled with the Senate bill. President Bush, who has promised a veto if the result is too expensive, backs an increase of $5 billion annually for the next five years, and would place a cap on eligibility for SCHIP at 200 percent of "poverty," or $41,300 for a family of four. Once again, most Republicans have put themselves in the position of supporting a less grandiose socialist measure. The Democrats are fighting on their own grounds where they happily claim to be more bighearted on behalf of the children than the supposedly tightfisted GOP.

You see, comments Karen Kerrigan, the president of the Small Business & Entrepreneurship Council, "if you are not in favor of vastly expanding the program to middle-income children, and changing the fundamental nature of the program to an entitlement, and paying for it all with a tax increase on smokers that will never materialize on the revenue end--you are against the children. If you don't believe 25-year-olds are children--you're against kids. Same if you don't believe SCHIP should provide health benefits to illegal immigrants, cover childless adults, or take away health care plans (Medicare Advantage Plans) from 3.2 million seniors to pay for SCHIP's massive expansion. And, finally, if you are like most Americans who don't like the idea of the federal government taxing your health insurance plans (oh, you didn't know about this?)--you, my friend, are against 'the children.'"

Private Coverage Gets Crowded Out

Insidiously, the legislation would be forcing taxpayers to foot the bill for public insurance for children who are already privately insured. The states are given a financial incentive to sign up as many children as they can, whether they are from poor or well-off families. Under the House-passed bill, as pointed out by opponents on the House Energy and Commerce Committee, "the more individuals a state signs up--regardless of their income or legal eligibility--the more money a state would receive."

Taxpayers carry the extra burden when private insurance is dropped in favor of public coverage. As it is, up to half the enrollees in SCHIP dropped their coverage to get on the public program, a number bound to increase under the new legislation. Moreover, keep in mind that almost three-quarters of the uninsured children are already eligible for SCHIP or Medicare, according to the Congressional Budget Office.

The crowding-out phenomenon aimed at private insurance will not only drive more recipients to the taxpayer-supported program, it will also push up the cost of premiums for those sticking with private plans. These incremental steps lead toward more fully socialized medicine.

John Goodman, president of the National Center for Policy Analysis (NCPA), explained the progression in the Wall Street Journal:

   Studies by MIT economist Jonathan Gruber show that public insurance
   substitutes for private insurance and the crowd-out rate is high.
   In general, for every extra dollar spent on Medicaid, private
   insurance contracts by 50 cents to 75 cents. For Schip, depending
   on how it is implemented, private insurance could contract by about
   60 cents.

      These findings make sense. Why pay for something if the
   government offers it for free? Under congressional proposals to
   expand Schip, the crowd-out would likely be much worse. The reason:
   Almost all the newly eligible beneficiaries already have insurance.

      The Senate bill would expand the eligibility for coverage under
   Schip to families with incomes 300% above the federal poverty level
   ($62,000), from its present ceiling, 200% above the poverty level.
   House Democrats want to push coverage to 400% ($83,000 annual
   income).

      Yet almost eight of every 10 children whose parents earn from
   200%-300% more than the poverty level already have private
   health-care coverage, according to the Congressional Budget Office
   (CBO). At incomes between 300% and 400% more than poverty, nine of
   every 10 children are already insured.

Even the expressed aim of the legislation--to provide better care for children--will be hindered, not helped. Many healthcare providers, often paid the same under SCHIP as under Medicaid, avoid Medicaid patients (because they are the worst payers) in favor of those who have private insurance. Doctors who don't want to be left holding the bag are already dropping public patients, a trend that can be expected to accelerate. It's one thing to provide public insurance; it's another matter to find a doctor willing to accept it. Actual access to healthcare for SCHIP and Medicaid patients can be expected to deteriorate.

Dependency on Smokers

The method of ostensibly paying for this legislation, which is heavily dependent on more tobacco taxes, is highly regressive, since smokers as a group are less affluent than the population as a whole. Low-income smokers spend a much larger proportion of their income on tobacco than do wealthy smokers.

Yet the Senate legislation is based on slapping an additional 61 cents per pack on cigarettes, raising the federal tax to a full dollar. As pointed out by Ed Feulner, president of the Heritage Foundation, "The only way the tax would raise the required $35 billion would be to get 22.4 million more folks puffing away over the next decade. Encouraging smoking--now that's a sure way to improve children's health."

In essence, these added taxes on the poor would support a new entitlement for the middle class. As pointed out by Elizabeth Karasmeighan in the San Francisco Examiner, "The basic reasoning behind tobacco tax increases is flawed. Proponents argue that Congress can have increased revenues to expand SCHIP, while encouraging more people to stop smoking. It is absurd to argue that a tax hike will decrease the number of people buying tobacco and that it will simultaneously increase tax revenues."

Rewarding Illegal Aliens

The steppingstone to socialism is being boosted by much of the press, sometimes by how matters are reported and sometimes by what is not mentioned. For example, there's little coverage about how this "children's" health bill is a federal giveaway to aliens who are breaking federal law. Nevertheless, said Kentucky Representative Ron Lewis, the House bill, "if it becomes law, would take $197 billion out of the Medicare trust fund, from our seniors, to give to illegal aliens."

Democrats in Congress, as noted by Investor's Business Daily, "know that with the help of a willing media they can cast any GOP resistance to their plan as 'anti-children' and 'anti-immigrant.' Their Children's Health and Medicare Protection Act, or CHAMP, would triple annual funding of SCHIP to $15 billion by 2012 and expand its coverage to include children from families that make up to $83,000 a year."

"Worse yet, they would effectively repeal the federal law that bars people who are in this country illegally from receiving federal benefits. Section 143 of the legislation would give the states the option of requiting proof of citizenship for enrollment in the program. It will be touted as an act of compassion providing care to those who need it, but in reality it will be a huge carrot to illegal immigration, which in many border states has brought the healthcare system to the breaking point."

Yes, liberals love our children so much that they are willing to hand a new entitlement to illegal aliens, cut Medicare to provide welfare to wealthy adults, cripple the care of millions, and coerce the poor to fund health insurance for the middle class. These altruists would drive up taxes for the general population and reduce our healthcare choices. Meanwhile, the young supposed beneficiaries will be burdened in the future with an unsupportable budget, since federal health spending is already projected to jump to about one-third of the gross domestic product by 2050.

That's a lot of love. Can you imagine how much damage liberals could do if they hated children?