The debate on Congressional reauthorization of the State Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP) is colored by popular myths. The worst of the myths may be the notion that the CHIP debate in Washington is about insurance. But it is actually about expanding a welfare program.
Calling a means-tested government program, where the government bears all the risk and recipients pay almost nothing for the benefit, anything but welfare is simply disingenuous. Whether the benefit is health care coverage or a check, the program is still a welfare program.
Second is the myth that CHIP reduces the uninsured. Year after year, Texas continues to rank as the state with the highest rate of uninsured persons in the country, but even at the peak of CHIP enrollment in Texas, there was no meaningful decline in uninsured children.
Across the country, growth in CHIP caseloads has come at the expense of private insurance. A Congressional Budget Office study from May 2007 concludes that “for every 100 children who enroll as a result of SCHIP, there is a corresponding reduction in private coverage of between 25 and 50 children.”
Efforts to reduce the uninsured through SCHIP expansion prove more unproductive the higher the income.
Today, many want to expand the program by increasing eligibility to families earning twice the federal poverty level ($41,300) to at least 300 percent ($61,950). Importantly, from 1996 to 2005, the rate of un-insurance among children whose families had income between 200 percent and 300 percent of the federal poverty level declined less than one percent.
Twenty years of incremental expansions took the percentage of children on government health care from 17 percent to 47 percent. Today’s proposals would push that past 70 percent.
The big-government left dismisses their opponents’ “ideological” concerns that this is another step to socialized medicine. The media hails State Rep. Sylvester Turner for his leadership in expanding the state’s CHIP program, and though a man of great conviction on this issue, his position is no less ideological.
“Would I like to see more kids added? Absolutely. Would I like to see 700,000 kids that would qualify for CHIPs on the rolls? Absolutely. But I don’t want to miss out on adding the kids that [this bill] will add because we can do that right now…and do the right thing for kids today, hoping that as we move forward, we’ll take another step for kids tomorrow, and the day after tomorrow.”
The description of the march to socialized medicine is nothing new. But rather than discuss failed and costly ideas to expand government programs, an entirely new approach is necessary.
This new model for health care should be based on a competitive system that favors freedom and choice, allowing people greater ownership of their health care, and choices for such a highly personal issue.
Health care and health insurance are so expensive because of excessive regulation and a lack of competition. Medical professionals around the country have systematically lobbied state legislatures for protection from alternatives that can provide great service at a fraction of the cost. As a result, patients are forced to obtain treatment from the highest cost providers.
And the vaunted federal cash that so many extol as the salvation of state budgets not only neglects to recognize such money all comes from the same taxpayers, but has created an addict class of states dependent on federal cash to stay afloat.
Where will billions more in appropriations and millions more kids on government programs leave us five years from now? No doubt talking about needing more money to cover more kids still.
Mary Katherine Stout is the Vice President of Policy and Director of the Center for Health Care Policy at the Texas Public Policy Foundation, a non-profit, free-market research institute based in Austin.