Question: What does Bush have against little kids?
Answer: Nothing, really. It just looks that way.
This week the committee that meets to work out differences between House and Senate legislation came up with a final version of the SCHIP bill, renewing and expanding the program that makes health care available to children whose parents cannot afford to purchase private medical insurance.
The next step is to submit the bill to the House and to the Senate separately for final passage by each body.
After that, the bill goes to the President for veto.
Now, the President famously doesn’t veto very often, but he says he feels very strongly that continuing to provide medical insurance for 6.6 million poor children at the levels established ten years ago is bad enough, but he sure doesn’t want another 4 million added to the program.
Nosiree, Bob. I mean, that would SO offend the health insurance industry – you know, the good folks who brought us Harry and Louise back in the 20th century – no doubt they would much prefer to have poor families who can’t afford to buy insurance just go away. Or go without medical care. Or take their petty little fevers and broken bones to the emergency room and drive up the cost of care for the rest of the population (but don’t worry, your insurance company will just increase your premiums to cover this).
What? I shouldn’t pick on the insurance companies, those warm and caring folks you just love having to beg for treatment approval?
Well, how about Big Tobacco, then, who would be just as offended, in this case by the mere IDEA of raising the tax on cigarettes to pay for the expanded SCHIP program. (Interestingly, raising the cigarette tax would tend to discourage some people from smoking, thus eliminating quite a bit of emergency room traffic.)
Republican opponents of SCHIP have objected, saying that “Everyone knows that a cigarette tax hike would disproportionately affect the poor.” Translation: More poor folks smoke (smoking relieves stress). Get it?
Must be those compassionate conservatives. You think?
Why would Big Tobacco object to reducing smoking? After all, they spend lots of money telling us smoking is hazardous to your health even while they are sending people to the doctor. You don’t suppose they are still making money, after all that effort? Could it be all about the money? Please, say it isn’t so!
To be fair to the President, however, he’s not said anything about any obligation to either the insurance companies or Big Tobacco.
What he has said is that he thinks SCHIP is too expensive, and so he has proposed funding levels of only a third of what the program is projected to need, with restrictions that would not only prevent expanding coverage to more children but would take it away from some of those presently served.
But don’t think this is all about saving money – after all, if saving money were really important . . .
No, it’s bigger than that. According to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, “Bush has vowed to veto any SCHIP bill that greatly expands funding, saying it was a move toward socialized medicine.”
Ah.
Paying for private insurers to insure kids is NOT government-run health care, as the President claims. And directing eligible families into Medicaid does not involve government-run health care because Medicaid, like Medicare, pays private doctors chosen by the patient.
SCHIP is different from Medicare because the States use the funds to buy insurance rather than to pay medical bills. Makes you wonder why the insurance companies are so opposed, doesn’t it?
This is where I tell the funny story I heard from one of the candidates for President: When he was talking about his plan for universal health care a lady in the audience stood and asked him to promise that he “won’t let the government get its hands on my Medicare!”
As I’ve written before, “socialized medicine” is really nothing more than a slogan designed by an advertising agency back around 1950, but lately some reasonable writers — Ezra Klein jumps to mind — have nicely distinguished “socialized” from “single-payer”: “Socialized” would describe the health system in England, where doctors are hired and paid by the government; “single-payer” would describe the Canadian system, where folks go to whatever private doctor or hospital they choose and the bill gets paid by the government.
Just like Medicare, actually.
Both the British and the Canadian systems provide universal health care, which means, at its most basic, that everyone gets coverage and emergency rooms are reserved for emergencies.
So, why can’t Medicare, which provides universal health care for seniors in a single-payer structure that is not socialized medicine, be the model for the rest of us?
That would make SCHIP totally unnecessary and save the President all this angst!
This week the committee that meets to work out differences between House and Senate legislation came up with a final version of the SCHIP bill, renewing and expanding the program that makes health care available to children whose parents cannot afford to purchase private medical insurance.
The next step is to submit the bill to the House and to the Senate separately for final passage by each body.
After that, the bill goes to the President for veto.
Now, the President famously doesn’t veto very often, but he says he feels very strongly that continuing to provide medical insurance for 6.6 million poor children at the levels established ten years ago is bad enough, but he sure doesn’t want another 4 million added to the program.
Nosiree, Bob. I mean, that would SO offend the health insurance industry – you know, the good folks who brought us Harry and Louise back in the 20th century – no doubt they would much prefer to have poor families who can’t afford to buy insurance just go away. Or go without medical care. Or take their petty little fevers and broken bones to the emergency room and drive up the cost of care for the rest of the population (but don’t worry, your insurance company will just increase your premiums to cover this).
What? I shouldn’t pick on the insurance companies, those warm and caring folks you just love having to beg for treatment approval?
Well, how about Big Tobacco, then, who would be just as offended, in this case by the mere IDEA of raising the tax on cigarettes to pay for the expanded SCHIP program. (Interestingly, raising the cigarette tax would tend to discourage some people from smoking, thus eliminating quite a bit of emergency room traffic.)
Republican opponents of SCHIP have objected, saying that “Everyone knows that a cigarette tax hike would disproportionately affect the poor.” Translation: More poor folks smoke (smoking relieves stress). Get it?
Must be those compassionate conservatives. You think?
Why would Big Tobacco object to reducing smoking? After all, they spend lots of money telling us smoking is hazardous to your health even while they are sending people to the doctor. You don’t suppose they are still making money, after all that effort? Could it be all about the money? Please, say it isn’t so!
To be fair to the President, however, he’s not said anything about any obligation to either the insurance companies or Big Tobacco.
What he has said is that he thinks SCHIP is too expensive, and so he has proposed funding levels of only a third of what the program is projected to need, with restrictions that would not only prevent expanding coverage to more children but would take it away from some of those presently served.
But don’t think this is all about saving money – after all, if saving money were really important . . .
No, it’s bigger than that. According to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, “Bush has vowed to veto any SCHIP bill that greatly expands funding, saying it was a move toward socialized medicine.”
Ah.
Paying for private insurers to insure kids is NOT government-run health care, as the President claims. And directing eligible families into Medicaid does not involve government-run health care because Medicaid, like Medicare, pays private doctors chosen by the patient.
SCHIP is different from Medicare because the States use the funds to buy insurance rather than to pay medical bills. Makes you wonder why the insurance companies are so opposed, doesn’t it?
This is where I tell the funny story I heard from one of the candidates for President: When he was talking about his plan for universal health care a lady in the audience stood and asked him to promise that he “won’t let the government get its hands on my Medicare!”
As I’ve written before, “socialized medicine” is really nothing more than a slogan designed by an advertising agency back around 1950, but lately some reasonable writers — Ezra Klein jumps to mind — have nicely distinguished “socialized” from “single-payer”: “Socialized” would describe the health system in England, where doctors are hired and paid by the government; “single-payer” would describe the Canadian system, where folks go to whatever private doctor or hospital they choose and the bill gets paid by the government.
Just like Medicare, actually.
Both the British and the Canadian systems provide universal health care, which means, at its most basic, that everyone gets coverage and emergency rooms are reserved for emergencies.
So, why can’t Medicare, which provides universal health care for seniors in a single-payer structure that is not socialized medicine, be the model for the rest of us?
That would make SCHIP totally unnecessary and save the President all this angst!
posted by The Voice | 11:13 AM
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