Bush gets one right: the SCHIP veto.
Topics: Health
04 Oct 2007
From: Ervan Darnell
After being a budget buster of liberal proportions, Bush gets one right
by vetoing the SCHIP increase [0]. The bll was a whopping 40% increase
(from $5G to $7G) that would cover families making from $38K/year to
$62K/year [2]. The $5G is already an increase, which Bush agreed to,
the veto is over yet another $2G increase. The $5G increase is already
a doubling from the current $5G [3]. I wish at moments like this that
Congress would simply double all government spending, since that would
be > 100% of the GDP, we could declare the government bankrupt tomorrow
and make it a better day.
This was a bad bill on lots of levels:
0) It's unnecessary as this income level can afford insurance for their
kids.
1) The extension to $62K of income means that people are being taxed and
then given back their own money, only less of it, and then be obligated
to spend it in a way that might not suit them. This is unlike the usual
argument of taxing the rich to generate welfare for the poor. This is
largely a transfer from a class back to itself. Even if you argue that
a transfer from the rich to the middle class is justified as a marginal
effect here, that's not likely stable as this level of coverage is
begging to quickly absorb everyone into it.
2) Okay, not quite, it's actually worse than that. It's funded with a
cigarette tax, a regressive tax. Why is that some poor person who
recklessly puts a cylindrical object in his/her mouth is responsible for
some middle class woman who recklessly puts a cylindrical object in her
vagina? I say recklessly because the presumption here is that people are
having children they cannot give proper health care to (I think that's
wrong as a factual matter, but that's the presumption of the bill).
3) This is direct aid to the states, which has the same problem as point
(1). Why do the feds tax states only to give them their own money back,
but less of it? In this case, the situation is even more silly than (1)
because on average this really is zero net transfer for states in a way
it's not for every individual. If SCHIP is such a good idea, then let
states implement it themselves and compete for having government health
care for kids versus affordable taxes.
One might object that the welfare magnet theory is why it must be
federalized. But by virtue of point (1) we're talking about a class of
people who can afford the insurance in question. If you say they cannot
afford it, then forcing them to buy it via their taxes hardly makes it
more affordable.
4) Obviously the objective of the Democrats is to socialize health
care. They keep raising the age and income on the young end while
lowering the age on the old end to converge everything in the middle
leaving no meaningful private market.
The defense is pathetic:
Regarding overriding Bush's veto of the S-Chip expansion:
> REP. RAHM EMANUEL (D), Illinois: First of all, I think we're going to
> do better than the 265. I already know about three or four votes that
> are going to switch on both sides of the aisle. And so I think the
> intensity and the pressure -- because people know that it's wrong to
> ask for $190 billion increase for the war in Iraq and yet deny 10
> million children health care and call it excessive spending. [1]
First, Bush is not denying health care to anyone. All he is doing is
refusing to raise my taxes to pay for someone else's health care. They
are still perfectly capable of getting it on their own. I'm not sure if
this is just hyperbolic rhetoric on Emanuel's part of whether, like
leftists tend to do, he assumes that goods can only be acquired by the
government and privatization is "abandonment" (as the bureaucrats call
freedom to choose).
But, it's worse than that. SCHIP covers 7M kids already. It's the
welfare expansion of 40% (from $5G to $7G) that is supposed to reach
10M. Thus, Bush is failing to offer welfare to 3M, not 10M as Emanuel says.
But, it's even worse than that. 25-60% (depending on who you ask) of
SCHIP recipients are already insured[2]. Thus a good fraction of those
3M are only soaking up a government subsidy and are not without insurance.
Still worse, SCHIP covers people who make enough to not qualify for
Medi*, i.e. families who can afford health care for their kids (at least
most basic health care). Thus, even the 40-75% of the 3M without health
insurance are to some degree self-insured anyway. And, we're talking
about extending it to higher income levels, which means the 40-75%
number of uninsured is high for the next bracket.
[0] http://firstread.msnbc.msn.com/archive/2007/10/03/393524.aspx
[1] http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/politics/july-dec07/schip_10-03.html
[2]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S-CHIP#_note-2
[3]http://www.cms.hhs.gov/MedicaidBudgetExpendSystem/Downloads/2004to1997.pdf
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