Republicans Stall SCHIP Renewal
Republicans Stall SCHIP Renewal
Today, as the House debated legislation expanding the State Children’s Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) to cover 11 million children, House Republicans warned that an expansion would “fund benefits for illegal immigrants,” not “cover poor children” and “push children with private insurance into state insurance.” Watch it:
House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-OH) and his Republican colleagues argued that since the original 1997 bill targeted children with incomes below 200 percent of the federal poverty level (FPL), any extension of the program should honor the original threshold and “cover poor children first.”
But as a new report by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the Urban Institute concludes, since 1996, “health insurance costs have risen so much that [even] for families at 300 percent of the FPL, ESI [Employer Sponsored Insurance] premiums for family coverage now make up 19 percent of income on average for a family of four“:
Put differently, ESI coverage is less affordable for families at 300 percent of the FPL today than it was for families at 200 percent of the FPL when SCHIP was passed.
Indeed, health insurance premiums have grown faster than paychecks, placing health insurance out of reach for many working class families. As an article in today’s LA Times points out, “at least 44 states are facing budget shortfalls over the next two years” and many “have been scrambling for months to cut aid to schools, universities and, increasingly, residents who rely on the state for medical care.”
But as a growing number of families are losing their public or private health insurance coverage, conservatives seem more concerned about Americans being forced-into public insurance plans and the nearly non-existent threat of illegal immigrant infiltration.
Undocumented immigrants or immigrants in the US on a temporary basis have always been ineligible for SCHIP and there is no evidence that undocumented immigrants are currently enrolled in the program. In fact, in a recent survey, “six states spent $16.6 million in state and federal taxpayer money to administer the Medicaid citdoc requirement, and identified only 8 undocumented immigrants, who likely would have been identified anyway through existing immigration documentation requirements.”
5 Responses to “Republicans Stall SCHIP Renewal”
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“…six states spent $16.6 million in state and federal taxpayer money to administer the Medicaid citdoc requirement, and identified only 8 undocumented immigrants, who likely would have been identified anyway through existing immigration documentation requirements.”
Imagine what could have been achieved had that nearly seventeen million dollars been spent instead on diagnostic procedures, preventative health care, parent patient education, and childhood immunizations.
Explain again please, why Republicans apparently ‘hate children…’
January 14th, 2009 at 5:35 pmRepublicans have spent the better part of 40 years telling everyone that government can’t do its job, and Democrats don’t care about middle class people, only poor people.
And yet today those same Republicans are castigating Democrats for refusing to hold healthcare for middle class kids hostage to state governments achieving a near-perfect signup rate on insurance for poor children.
The cynicism on display is breathtaking.
And what’s saddest is that they really don’t seem to understand or care that millions of people really are working hard and uninsured, and they’re getting sick and dying because of it. Christ, maybe there IS a better solution out there than this one, but we’ll never begin to reach it when one of our political parties won’t even debate in good faith. It’s a profound disservice to the nation they’re supposed to represent.
January 14th, 2009 at 5:36 pma 2400% increase in the tax on tobacco used for make your own cigarettes. The poorest make there own and they will bear the brunt of it. The new tax goes from $1 a pound to $24 a pound. Someone better wake up. YOUR TAXING THE POOREST OF THE SMOKERS> DUH
January 14th, 2009 at 6:51 pmI’m going mad, I’m sure I posted a comment yesterday.
Does anyone know if a legal permanent resident who hasn’t been in the country at least 5 years, is married to a US citizen and they have a child, would they child be disqualified because of the non US citizen parent or qualify because of the US citizen parent under the republican rule desires?
January 15th, 2009 at 9:49 amI’m just wondering just how sick they want to be in excluding children.
RECORD OPPORTUNITY
January 15th, 2009 at 12:51 pmIn the past it’s been difficult for the uninsured, especially children, to receive quality ongoing and follow-up healthcare because there was no previous record of their condition or treatments. Valuable time was wasted gathering basic information, and in some cases essential health histories have been lost. The lack of continuity in treating the uninsured is one of the big problems facing our health system. The proposed SCHIP extension will potentially insure 4 million children, making portable electronic health records more important than ever.
More discussion: http://www.healthcaretownhall.com