Let's cover the children
NO ONE can accuse Utah Senator Orrin Hatch of being an exponent of big government, but he realizes that the children's health insurance program he co-sponsored in 1997 needs to be expanded. Because of Republicans like him, the bill that would cover an additional 3.8 million youngsters has enough support in the Senate to override President Bush's indefensible veto. With a push by the bill's coalition of backers, it will also get the 15 to 20 votes needed to override the veto in the House.
Supporters of the State Children's Health Insurance Program (S-Chip) need to convince such Republicans as Representative Randy Kuhl of New York that the bill is not a stop on the road to socialized medicine, nor does it expand subsidies to the "upper class," as he said in a press release. Rather, it is an attempt to provide insurance, largely through private companies, to children in families up to 250 or 300 percent of the federal poverty line.
For a family of three, that 300-percent figure is $51,510 a year. This is hardly the upper class, although under the current law they would not qualify for S-Chip, which usually limits coverage to those making less than 200 percent of the poverty limit. Perhaps people in that 300-percent income range could have afforded insurance in 1998, when S-Chip took effect. Since then, the cost of an employer-based policy has soared 125 percent, while wages have gone up 34 percent.
Kuhl is among the Republicans who are being targeted by the Democrats for opposing the S-Chip expansion. They are unwise to support the president, who Hatch believes got bad advice from his aides. S-Chip expansion ought to be a bipartisan success, as its inital passage was in 1997.
Eight Democrats also opposed the bill, most of them from tobacco-growing states. They dislike the 61-cent-per-pack increase in the tobacco tax that would finance the S-Chip package. Perhaps it would have been better to pay for it out of general revenues, but this is an honest compromise, and the increase in the cost of cigarettes might discourage youths from starting this dangerous addiction.
Representative Dennis Kucinich of Ohio, a Democratic presidential candidate, voted against the bill because he thought it should have provided insurance for children of legal immigrants. That's an issue best left to the future. He shouldn't side with Bush and deny health insurance to millions of other youths.
If the House fails to override the veto, Speaker Nancy Pelosi plans to send the bill through again. But the first override vote isn't until Oct. 18, plenty of time for the American Medical Association, the American Cancer Society, the association of America's Health Insurance Plans, and all the other groups supporting S-Chip to persuade 15 to 20 representatives to join the 265 who have already voted for the bill. As Hatch said this week, it's "the morally right thing to do."
