Ideology and kids' health
Editorial
The Berkshire Eagle
Monday, October 08
President Bush’s veto of legislation providing an overdue expansion of the State Children’s Health Insurance Program (S-CHIP) is the latest of many examples of the foolishness that can result when ideology is allowed to trump all else, including logic and fairness. Mr. Bush, who worries about creeping socialism as if was still 1957, is beyond hope, but if enough congressional Republicans can set aside the ideology that helped put them in the minority and do what is right, his veto could still be overridden later this month.
The 10-year-old S-CHIP program has done a fine job of providing health insurance coverage for children from low-income families, but because of a growing population and changing demographics, many children are now falling through the cracks. Congress wants to expand the program to include another 3.8 million children, many in middle-income families that cannot afford insurance because modest wage increases cannot keep up with the rising costs of employer-based insurance.
Mr. Bush, who is always willing to mislead when it comes to making an ideological point, asserts that children in families earning $83,000 a year will be covered by the expanded program, which as far as can be determined, is based on a proposal in New York state to extend the plan to families making 400 percent of the poverty level. The actual legislation, however, would cover families earning up to 300 percent of the poverty level, or $51,000 a year. Those families are not wealthy, and with health insurance costs climbing at roughly four times the rate as wages, they need help insuring their children.
Ideology enters the picture with the president’s insistence that the expanded S-CHIP plan will open the door to “socialized medicine.” The word “socialism” doesn’t scare people much anymore, but it isn’t accurate anyway when applied to proposals like single-payer health care, in which the government pays for health care, not patients and their families at the mercy of profit-driven insurance companies. The medicine would not be “socialized” because patients would receive the same treatment and have the same options as they do now. The difference is that working men and women would not have their paychecks gouged by insurance payments and would not risk bankruptcy if hit by a catastrophic illness.
Out on the campaign trail, the Republican presidential candidates have all backed the veto, even though in the case of former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney and former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani, this involves repudiating stands on health insurance they took as elected officials. Mr. Romney is so tied in knots by his serial flip-flopping that he now finds himself campaigning against the Massachusetts plan to provide insurance for all residents that he signed into law because it constitutes the dreaded “socialized medicine.”
Ideology should never get in the way of good government, as it has with the expansion of the children’s health insurance program. Another 20 legislators are needed to override the veto in the House, and if enough Republicans care about their constituents, and their re-election hopes, to change their votes, this expansion of a valuable program could still overcome ideology and become law.