Our federal government cares more about protecting the insurance industry than sick children...

modernesquire — Mon, 20 Aug 2007 19:43:13 -0700

Yet another example of the fraud that was "compassionate conservativism." According to the New York Times, the President, upset that Congress declined to place the draconian limits on SCHIP (the government program that provides health insurance for children) he demanded, has tried to do an end-run and achieve through regulation what he could not achieve legislatively.

Today, the Administration is announcing that no state may expand its SCHIP program, until it is able to prove that they have a 95% participation rate for children who are either eligible for Medicaid or CHIP. Presently, no state has such a high participation rate:

Deborah S. Bachrach, a deputy commissioner in the New York State Health Department, said, “No state in the nation has a participation rate of 95 percent.”
And Cindy Mann, a research professor at the Health Policy Institute of Georgetown University, said, “No state would ever achieve that level of participation under the president’s budget proposals.”
The Congressional Budget Office has said that the president’s budget, which seeks $30 billion from 2008 to 2012, is not enough to pay for current levels.

So in other words, you can only expand coverage in a program in which the Administration, by design, is not budgeting enough to cover those already covered, let alone everyone who presently qualifies.

And what must a state do if hits the mythical 95% participation rate?

Mr. Smith said, “the state must establish a minimum of a one-year period of uninsurance for individuals” before they can receive public coverage.
That is considerably stricter than requirements imposed in the past. In February, for example, the Bush administration allowed Pennsylvania to increase its income limit to 300 percent of the poverty level after the state agreed to a six-month waiting period for children who are 2 and older with family incomes exceeding 200 percent of the poverty level.

So once you get a 95% participation rate, you can only cover additional families so long as they are willing to go a year without insurance for their children. (Know any such parent?) That's twice as long as the present record waiting period of six-months in Pennsylvania. Oh, and even then, the State can only do so as long as the State can document that the “the number of children in the target population insured through private employers has not decreased by more than two percentage points over the prior five-year period.”

Oh, and as for the children presently getting coverage in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, New York, and California under waivers the Bush Administration has already granted those States?

Well, the Bush Administration is giving those States one year to bring their programs under these new guidelines or else they'll lose the right to continue providing coverage to these children:

In his letter, Mr. Smith said the new standards would apply to states that previously received federal approval to cover children with family incomes exceeding 250 percent of the poverty level. Such states should amend their state plans to meet federal expectations within 12 months, or the Bush administration “may pursue corrective action,” Mr. Smith said.

So imagine the parent in Pennsylvania who actually had to go six months with their children uninsured only to learn now that they're going to lose the coverage they've got because the Administration wants to revoke their prior authorization to allow such coverage because it upsets their insurance industry pay masters.

Why is it that when it comes for education, conservatives are all for competition between the public and private sector, but when it comes to health care, it's all about private industry protection. Why shouldn't the government be allowed to use it's market leverage to purchase drugs for seniors in bulk just like it does its veterans? Why if government can provide better coverage for children at a cheaper rate should it be barred because the private sector cannot compete?

When Republicans talk about health care reform, they talk about requiring people to buy private health insurance like we're already required to do for auto insurance (see, Ken Blackwell/Mitt Romney/Rudi Guillani). That's not health care reform. That's a health insurance industry protection racket.

When Democrats talk about health care reform, they actually mean it. Reform where patient care and preventative medicine come to the forefront over profit motives and insurance bureaucracy. Reform where a patchwork of private and completely inconsistent bureacracy is given some sense of order and predictability.

When conservatives talk about privitization or "school choice," they don't really mean a fair fight in which the public sector goes against the private sector under the same terms and conditions. But, hell, at least they concede that the public sector should be considered a legitimate provider for education. However, somewhere along the way, the conservative movement has taken the attitude that although the private sector can compete with the public sector when it comes to our children's education; it cannot when it comes to their health care. Yet, instead of letting the public sector feel a need the private sector fails to adequately address, the conservative solution is to deny children help from either sector effectively.

WTF!?

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Our federal government cares more about protecting the insurance industry than sick children...