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On S-CHIP: Send Him The Same Bill | 44 comments (44 topical)

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Are you sure he wasn't talking about (none / 0) (#11)
by sarcastic unnamed one on Wed Oct 03, 2007 at 01:45:07 PM EST
"Helping people who don't need help": that's not what S-CHIP does.
the expansion of S-CHIP to parents who can afford health insurance?

[ Parent ]
Insurance (5.00 / 2) (#12)
by tnthorpe on Wed Oct 03, 2007 at 02:10:57 PM EST
costs are rising much faster than wages, pricing increasing numbers of people, hard-working but struggling, out of insurance. I object to depictions of a whole group on the basis of an ideological anecdote.

Imagine the child in HS's anecdote above is sick and also uninsured, through no fault of the child's own it seems it must be said. That child ends up in emergency rooms, city clinics, or other service providers in much worse shape and far greater cost to the public.

[ Parent ]

Point taken (none / 0) (#14)
by sarcastic unnamed one on Wed Oct 03, 2007 at 02:22:40 PM EST
but the proposal does expand the program to families outside it's original, laudable, purpose of helping families who couldn't afford insurance, to families who are wealthy enough to afford it themselves but choose to let others pay for it for them.

[ Parent ]
That doesn't bother me, assuming the (5.00 / 0) (#15)
by oculus on Wed Oct 03, 2007 at 02:36:01 PM EST
benefit is limited to minors.  They shouldn't suffer for their parents lack of foresight or gambling instincts.  Anyhow, all tax payers ultimately pay if they aren't insured.  

[ Parent ]
My wife and I were uninsured for years (none / 0) (#18)
by sarcastic unnamed one on Wed Oct 03, 2007 at 03:06:54 PM EST
as was most of our social circle.

We got health care when we needed it and paid for it ourselves.

For the record, lack of health insurance does not equal lack do health care nor taxpayers paying for the uninsured's health care.

[ Parent ]

I'm thinking catastrophic events, such (5.00 / 0) (#20)
by oculus on Wed Oct 03, 2007 at 03:24:15 PM EST
as paraplegia or brain injury (m/c accidents; m/v accidents, etc.)  Assume you didn't have kids.

[ Parent ]
Right on (none / 0) (#21)
by sarcastic unnamed one on Wed Oct 03, 2007 at 03:37:08 PM EST
I have no objection to a catastrophic safety net but that's a different conversation than S-CHIP.

When uninsured I remember paying the ER $200+ because my wife had the flu so bad she thought she was dying. For that $200 the doc gave us an Rx for aspirin.

An uninsured buddy had a burst appendix, ER bill came to over $5K. They asked him how much he could afford to pay/month, he said $10. They accepted that.

Another uninsured friend started hemorrhaging from an ectopic pregnancy. That ER bill was over $6K, if I remember correctly, and she made (maybe still makes) small monthly payments for years.

When my wife and I decided to have kids we also decided to get higher-paying jobs through which we could better afford health insurance.

Amazing what you can do when you set your mind to it.

[ Parent ]

Or, put another way, (none / 0) (#22)
by sarcastic unnamed one on Wed Oct 03, 2007 at 03:38:44 PM EST
amazing what you can do when you choose to do it.

[ Parent ]
S-CHIP (5.00 / 1) (#16)
by tnthorpe on Wed Oct 03, 2007 at 02:42:26 PM EST
is run by states, so that South Dakota sets its limit at 140% of the Federal Poverty Level and New Jersey at 350%. Insurance affordability isn't as clear a matter as it seems, neither is eligibility. The CBO estimates that for every hundred new S-CHIP members, 20-25% will be transfers from the private insurance sector. Are these people "choosing" to let others pay for them? I don't think that characterizes the nature of what they're doing very well. When confronted with high costs of housing, transportation, education, and insurance many families are simply unable to cope. S-CHIP is rightly directed at people who are having a very hard time making ends meet and it helps them protect their children. I can't see anything objectionable in that.


[ Parent ]
Let's get it on!!! (1.00 / 0) (#17)
by jimakaPPJ on Wed Oct 03, 2007 at 03:03:26 PM EST
How about NHC for ALL children under age of 19??

We can use a national sales tax to pay for it. And,of course, we will exempt basic necessities such as unprepared food, utilities (cellphone service and anything but basic cable/satellite excluded), soap, washing detergent, tooth paste, etc.... to make it fair. We will charge a higher tax for restaurant food, and all new automobiles above, say, $30,000 sticker price..

[ Parent ]

The accountants' lobby would love that (5.00 / 0) (#23)
by roy on Wed Oct 03, 2007 at 03:47:22 PM EST
Does fruit count as prepared if it's clean enough to eat?  If I can get cuts of uncooked meat without tax, how about chunks of raw fish cut into sashimi-size pieces?  Does parsley count as food if I use it as garnish?  How about pumpkins used to make jack-o-lanterns?  Is smoked meat prepared, or merely preserved?  Is deodorant soap (top o' the mornin' to ye) soap?

Every single product up for sale will be subject to a whole new category of, er, categorization.  The beurocracy necessary to beurocrate everything will probably cost more than the taxes will bring in.  We'll have to raise taxes on some categories to pay for figuring out the taxes on the old categories.  It'll spiral until everybody in the country is a tax-coder except for one guy who we're all following around the grocery store sticking bar codes on items as he picks them up and who can't make up his mind between ketchup (tax code A9QP7O) and catsup (A9QP70).

Not to mention giving unscrupulous businesses a new system to game, wooing tax coders to assign their competitors to "luxury" status while assigning their own goods as exempt necessities.  Well, not to not mention it, but to mention it in some detail, then again pointless tangent.

If I use my exempt prescription drugs recreationally, will I be charged with tax evasion?  Will calculators be exempt, because they'll be necessary to keep track of the combinations of local and national taxes while shopping?


[ Parent ]

picky picky picky ;-) (1.00 / 0) (#28)
by jimakaPPJ on Wed Oct 03, 2007 at 05:28:05 PM EST
Yes, it has its disadvantages, but not nearly was bad as you make out.

Plus, it gets everyone. The illegal aliens, the dope dealers, the Ebay merchants...everybody gets to contribute...

Of course if you still insist that it is too complicated, I'd settled for 7% on everything...

[ Parent ]

Well, that's the difference then. (none / 0) (#19)
by sarcastic unnamed one on Wed Oct 03, 2007 at 03:14:20 PM EST
The 20-25% who previously chose to buy health insurance and who will now choose to avail themselves of "free" gvt funded health insurance are not "choosing" in your book. I don't agree. So be it.

[ Parent ]
btw, the CBO actually estimates over 33% (none / 0) (#25)
by sarcastic unnamed one on Wed Oct 03, 2007 at 04:51:41 PM EST
of those choosing to afford insurance now will switch to having the rest of the US pay for it for them.
The Congressional Budget Office estimates that about 3.8 million of those uninsured children would get government coverage under the bill. It also estimates that about 2 million children now covered by private insurance would switch to SCHIP.
2/(3.8 + 2) = 34%, not 20-25% as yous said. Just for the record.

[ Parent ]
Is that so bad? (5.00 / 0) (#30)
by kdog on Wed Oct 03, 2007 at 06:28:41 PM EST
So the insurance companies have 2 million less people to rip off....boo-hoo for the insurance companies.

[ Parent ]

On S-CHIP: Send Him The Same Bill | 44 comments (44 topical)

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