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

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my guess, (1.00 / 0) (#5)
by HeadScratcher on Wed Oct 03, 2007 at 12:41:46 PM EST
is that you don't mind paying for something to people who can already afford it?

Next time you're in line at the grocery store, pay for the groceries of the family behind you. After all, you'd be helping kids eat. Would you rather them starve? I can't believe you'd be so heartless to let children starve so you wouldn't pay for something. And then when they get into their car and drive to their home or apartment in a comfortable neighborhood, then you can pat yourself on the back for helping people who don't need help...

I'd be happier if the taxes were being spent more on the POOR and NEEDY than those who can afford and simply choose to lead risky lives.

BTW, I work with poor and lower middle class everyday and I can tell you that the choices people make with their lives will sometimes make you, well, scatch your head.

[ Parent ]

You cannot be serious (5.00 / 2) (#10)
by tnthorpe on Wed Oct 03, 2007 at 01:35:16 PM EST
The Bush Administration is spending $720 million a day, over $400 million of that as debt being passed on to the next generation(s), and health care for children costing a merest fraction of that is just too much?

Talk about skewed priorities.

Afford it? Have you done any research into this at all? Do you know what it costs to insure a family of four, or anyone with a pre-existing condition? According to the Kaiser Family Foundation, insurance premiums rose 87% between 2000 and 2006, or 4x faster than wages. Link to KFF Study, see esp. page 11Link to Congressional Budget Office's report

"Helping people who don't need help": that's not what S-CHIP does. It leaves me scratching my head when ideology and knee jerk philosophizing make people say things that are simply unsupported by the facts.

[ Parent ]

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 ]
I've done that.... (5.00 / 1) (#26)
by kdog on Wed Oct 03, 2007 at 05:00:34 PM EST
payed for a family's groceries.  I see the same family at Pathmark all the time, they are always watching the total and saying "take this off, take that off" to afford the bill.  It always makes me sad to see the kids embarassment...having been there myself as a kid when mom couldn't afford the bill, watching the steak go back in the freezer.

Not too long ago I hit a number and felt like doing something feel-good...so when I saw them that week I payed their grocery check.  It felt really good...and I didn't even care if the mother was lazy or liked to drink or whatever.  It wasn't about the mother, it was about me and those kids.

The same for health care...it's about us, all of us.  How we want the govt. to spend our money.  You wanna pay for health care for children of lousy and/or struggling parents, or another gross of missiles for Israel or Egypt?  Ya know what I'm choosing.

Assuming, of course, that it is impossible at this point to abolish the income tax and shrink the govt. in half...which would be my preference.  They are taking our money either way...how do you want it spent?

[ Parent ]

Ignoring the fact that there is no support (none / 0) (#27)
by sarcastic unnamed one on Wed Oct 03, 2007 at 05:22:07 PM EST
for the contention that "struggling" accurately describes those who'll be covered by the S-CHIP extension proposal, and the difficulty with actually defining the term itself, if I was a cig smoker and don't want my money taken from me to pay for this extension - but I would be forced to, against my will, by the power of the government - why do you support further erosions of my freedoms and liberties?

[ Parent ]
Which is why I prefer.... (none / 0) (#29)
by kdog on Wed Oct 03, 2007 at 06:26:10 PM EST
the abolish the income tax/shrink govt. option.  Nobody should be forced, by threat of imprisonment, to give their money to anybody.  It's the libertarian in me.  

But we are forced...so I'd rather S-Chip than missiles. I'm not gonna rail against a program like this and stay mum on weapons for Israel, Egypt, and others.  

Assuming there is no way to stop the govt. from taking our money, I ask again..how do you want it spent?  For once, I think I'm in the majority on this one.  Most people, I would think, prefer a program to insure children hovering slightly above the poverty line over weapons for foreign govt's...maybe I'm wrong.

[ Parent ]

You are being disingenuous, (none / 0) (#39)
by sarcastic unnamed one on Thu Oct 04, 2007 at 12:33:05 PM EST
and I think you know it when you said:
to insure children hovering slightly above the poverty line
From the AP:
The bill would limit the full federal match to families with incomes less than three times the poverty level
iow, incomes of up to $0.01 less than 3X times the gvt poverty level would qualify. I don't think that can realistically be portrayed as "hovering slightly above the poverty line."

C'mon.

[ Parent ]

That's not the case (none / 0) (#41)
by tnthorpe on Thu Oct 04, 2007 at 12:52:47 PM EST
The states set those limits according to present law. That's why South Dakota and New Jersey have such different limits.

From a McClatchy newspapers article:

Are Bush's Points Valid?

    President Bush claims that the bipartisan bill to expand the State Children's Health Insurance Program "would result in taking a program meant to help poor children and turning it into one that covers children in households with incomes up to $83,000 a year."

    That's not true.

    The bill maintains current law. It limits the program to children from families with incomes up to twice the federal poverty level -- now $20,650 for a family of four, for a program limit of $41,300 -- or to 50 percentage points above a state's Medicaid eligibility threshold, which varies state to state.

    States that want to increase eligibility beyond those limits would require approval from Bush's Health and Human Services Department, just as they must win waivers now. The HHS recently denied a request by New York to increase its income threshold to four times the poverty level -- the $82,600 figure that Republican opponents of the bill are using.

    Under current law, nineteen states have won waivers from these income limits. The biggest was granted to New Jersey, which upped its income limit to 350 percent of the federal poverty level, or $72,275 for a family of four in 2007. The expanded SCHIP program retains the waiver option under federal discretion; it doesn't change it.
-------
Costs of living vary dramatically, so that flexibility was recognized as a programmatic necessity.

[ Parent ]

I said nothing of Bush's 4X poverty level claim. (none / 0) (#44)
by sarcastic unnamed one on Thu Oct 04, 2007 at 01:58:58 PM EST
The compromise bill encourages states to enroll children of parents who earn 200 percent of the federal poverty rate ($41,000 for family of four), but allows an expansion up to 300 percent ($62,000).
I also said nothing critical of the S-CHIP's flexibility.

[ Parent ]
You C'mon.... (none / 0) (#42)
by kdog on Thu Oct 04, 2007 at 01:11:10 PM EST
Sarc...the federal poverty level has no basis in reality in places like NY, NJ, CA.  It barely has a basis in reality in places like MS and AL.

The whole point of certain states going above and beyond the federal level of poverty is because the line drawn by the feds is a joke.

[ Parent ]

Add... (none / 0) (#33)
by kdog on Wed Oct 03, 2007 at 06:32:52 PM EST
In other words, it's all welfare.  Whose welfare should we be concerned with?

[ Parent ]
Or, as the President himself sd. (none / 0) (#6)
by oculus on Wed Oct 03, 2007 at 12:52:06 PM EST
this will lead to middle-class entitlement.

[ Parent ]

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

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