Ideology Over Healthy Families

Really, this Administration is bucking to go down in history as the world's most callous collection of people.

The Bush administration, continuing its fight to stop states from expanding the popular Children’s Health Insurance Program, has adopted new standards that would make it much more difficult for New York, California and others to extend coverage to children in middle-income families.

Administration officials outlined the new standards in a letter sent to state health officials on Friday evening, in the middle of a month-long Congressional recess. In interviews, they said the changes were aimed at returning the Children’s Health Insurance Program to its original focus on low-income children and to make sure the program did not become a substitute for private health coverage.

The S-CHIP program works, states want more of their kids to be covered, and in the long run it's far more affordable than allowing the uninsured to use the emergency room as their primary care physician.

Doesn't matter to this President. Wouldn't want people to get the idea that they can get decent health care.

California wants to increase its income limit to 300 percent of the poverty level, from 250 percent. Pennsylvania recently raised its limit to 300 percent, from 200 percent. New Jersey has had a limit of 350 percent for more than five years.

Before making such a change, Mr. Smith said, states must demonstrate that they have “enrolled at least 95 percent of children in the state below 200 percent of the federal poverty level” who are eligible for either Medicaid or the child health program.

Deborah S. Bachrach, a deputy commissioner in the New York State Health Department, said, “No state in the nation has a participation rate of 95 percent.”

The President is mandating these participation rates, but offering no budgeting for them. It becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy, designed for states to be unable to meet the 95% number and therefore restricting health access for children.

Basically what the President is saying here is that the system is working too well. They speak about competition but they don't want S-CHIP to ever compete with private insurance (mainly because it would blow the doors off of it).

To minimize the risk of such substitution, Mr. Smith said in his letter, states should charge co-payments or premiums that approximate the cost of private coverage and should impose “waiting periods,” to make sure higher-income children do not go directly from a private health plan to a public program.

If a state wants to set its income limit above 250 percent of the poverty level ($51,625 for a family of four), Mr. Smith said, “the state must establish a minimum of a one-year period of uninsurance for individuals” before they can receive public coverage.

There's another provision that says if private insurers start losing customers to S-CHIP then the higher coverage would be slashed. This despite the fact that insurers have never seen such a drop, and if they did it'd be their own fault for denying coverage to so many based on pre-existing conditions.

This is an important moment for the nation. At a time when health care is the number one domestic policy, when tens of millions have been added to the ranks of the uninsured, and when this President has done virtually nothing about it in 6 1/2 years, he's putting up a firewall designed to make sure your kids aren't covered.