The costs are too high

Before August recess, both the House and the Senate passed bills that would expand the State Children’s Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) significantly. The House bill adds $50 billion to cover the next five years. The Senate bill calls for $35 billion more over five years. The Bush administration would prefer a more sober $5 billion increase over the same period of time. The Senate bill passed on a 68-31 vote, a wide enough margin to override a presidential veto. The House bill encountered much more resistance, passing 225-204.

Created for children from families in the gap between Medicaid and private health insurance, SCHIP now covers children whose families earn up to 200 percent of the poverty level. The Democrats’ expansion would change that to 400 percent, and it would expand the definition of children to include anyone younger than 25. That means a 24-year-old son or daughter in a family of four with an annual income of more than $82,000 would be eligible. If 24 seems too old to qualify for a children’s health plan, consider the 700,000 adults that received coverage through SCHIP in 2006. The program is already being stretched beyond its intended parameters. Democrats would like to extend that boundary even further.

According to an estimate from the Congressional Budget Office, the SCHIP expansion would enroll 6.1 million more children (and adults) in the program, but only 4 million of those children would come from the ranks of the uninsured. Fully 2.1 million children would drop their private health insurance in favor of the government-funded program. While Democrats might be eager to facilitate this shift as a precursor to introducing a more sweeping transition to government-run health care in 2008, the American taxpayer certainly isn’t.

The House bill furthermore cuts funding from the successful Medicare Advantage program, which provides seniors with a choice of competing private health-care plans. Even though 18 percent of eligible seniors are enrolled in Medicare Advantage, the House bill would strip the program of $50 billion in funding over five years, guaranteeing curtailed coverage, lost services or increased premiums (in all likelihood, all three). The current struggle over SCHIP foreshadows the likely 2008 health-care battle.

Senate Democrats are peddling the unbelievable claim that even though under their expansion the program would cost $16 billion in 2012, it would only require $3.5 billion in 2013 — $1.5 billion less than it costs now. Under the House bill, SCHIP would become a permanent entitlement, no longer requiring reauthorization every 10 years. President Bush has vowed to veto the costly expansions passed by both the House and the Senate, and he has good reason to do so.