President Bush, no stranger to meddling in places he doesn’t belong, is wrong to short circuit legislative debate over who can qualify for a popular children’s health insurance program.
Known as SCHIP, the program is set to expire in just over a month and Bush has threatened to veto congressional legislation reauthorizing it. He has deemed it too costly and a step toward universal health care, despite the program’s strong bipartisan support in Congress.
The president recently imposed new standards for the program that would set an income eligibility limit at 250 percent of poverty. Given the soaring cost of medical care, that limit is likely to be too rigid. Rather, the president should keep an open mind and not unilaterally impose standards for the State Children’s Health Insurance Program that could foreclose health insurance for kids who need it.
Under his new standards, a child whose family earns more than 250 percent of the poverty level – about $43,000 for a family of three – would have to be uninsured for a year to qualify for the program.
A year is far too long to leave a child uninsured in this country. It would place more of a burden on hospital emergency rooms that are already severely overcrowded. Plus, it’s far more expensive for an ER visit than a trip to a doctor’s office, which would be available to an SCHIP child.
The new standards also would require states that want to enroll children with family incomes above 250 percent of the poverty level to prove that they already have covered 95 percent of the children in families whose income is below 200 percent of the poverty level. We understand Bush wanting to focus on making sure the program covers the poorest children first. It should. But it still leaves far too many children who need health insurance out in the cold. The number of uninsured children rose for the second consecutive year, according to a new U.S. Census report this week. About 8.7 million children in this country are uninsured, including 180,000 in Colorado.
Colorado officials have said their goal is to ensure that all children currently eligible for the SCHIP program are covered. About 57,000 children are now covered and another 50,000 or so are eligible.
Evidence suggests that those enrolling in SCHIP are doing so, not because it’s cheaper or more convenient, but because they don’t have a choice. Many parents work for companies that don’t provide insurance. A strict 250 percent cap is unrealistic given the soaring costs of medical care that have pushed private insurance plans beyond the reach of millions of families. The cost of living also varies throughout the country.
SCHIP was created in 1997 to help insure children whose families earned too much to qualify for Medicaid but not enough to afford private insurance. But 1997 funding levels are not adequate anymore.
The Senate has a sensible, five-year plan that would allow states to broaden SCHIP coverage to families making up to 300 percent of the federal poverty level ($51,510 for a family of three). The House bill sets no income eligibility limits, which we would oppose. The House and Senate plans will be hashed out in a conference committee in September.
Sen. Ken Salazar said Tuesday that the Senate has a veto-proof plan, but only if the cost increase is limited to $35 billion, paid for by raising the tobacco tax, and not the $50 billion proposed by the House. The conference committee should adopt the Senate plan and send it to the president.
