BCT Editorial – 8/3/07

This page was last updated on August 27, 2007.

Tough choices; Editorial; Beaver County Times; August 3, 2007.

Below is a detailed critique of the subject editorial.

“If Americans over the age of 65 are eligible for government-subsidized health-care, shouldn’t American children under the age of 18 also be extended the same coverage?

“And if income restrictions are used to determine eligibility for the State Children’s Health Insurance Program, why shouldn’t Medicare be means tests [sic] as well?

“These questions were hard to avoid as the House and the Senate this week debated expanding SCHIP.”

[RWC] Regular readers know I oppose Medicare and support phasing it out in a way that doesn’t pull the rug out from under current beneficiaries and those persons “close” to becoming beneficiaries. Despite that position, there’s one heck of a difference between seniors getting Medicare benefits and children getting the same benefits. This may have escaped the editorial author, but most current Medicare beneficiaries paid Medicare taxes throughout all or a portion of their working careers. That’s obviously not the case for kids.

“The Associated Press reported the Senate measure, which would cost $60 billion, is designed to cover the 6.6 million children currently enrolled in the program plus another 3.2 million without insurance. The boost would be financed by a 61-cent-a-pack tax increase on cigarettes.

“The House version would cost $75 billion and would cover an additional 5.5 million children.

“President Bush has threatened to veto legislation that broadens the program, saying it spends too much and covers too many middle-income people. The president had proposed spending $30 billion.

“SCHIP was created to provide medical coverage for poor children. However, The AP reports the Bush administration has issued waivers to several states that allowed them to extend coverage to children with higher incomes and to adults. Nineteen states have done so, allowing families earning as much as $82,600 to be covered.

“The increase in eligibility has led some critics to contend that in addition to the program becoming too expensive, it also, as the White House contended when it issued the veto threat, ‘goes too far in federalizing health care.’

“But go back to the questions raised at the top of the editorial. As a nation, a government and a people, the flaws, disparities and inequities of health care in America must be addressed and resolved.

“However, coming up with a new way of doing things won’t be easy, starting with this question, which was asked by U.S. Sen. Mel Martinez, R-Fla.: ‘Do we want private health care or do we want government-run health care?’

“Politically, ideologically and philosophically, that question is the third-rail of health-care reform.

“Tough choices must be made, though, because for millions of Americans, even those with health-care coverage, and for businesses that provide health-care coverage to their employees, the cobbled-together system we have now isn’t working.

“Half-way measures like SCHIP and Medicare that merely postpone the inevitable. The longer the delay, the worse the situation will become.”

[RWC] What’s so tough about choosing in favor of personal and parental responsibility? That is, choose to have people pay for their own healthcare and/or that of their children without dumping the burden on their neighbors.

The editorial opines, “coming up with a new way of doing things won’t be easy.” Has it not occurred to the editorial author(s) that the last “new way of doing things” – government interference in the healthcare market beginning in World War II – put us where we are? Never mind, I know the answer.