An Overblown Fear About S-CHIP

To hear the Bush administration tell it, expanding the State Children’s Health Insurance Program would entice hordes of families to drop their private coverage and put their children on the public dole. As the Health and Human Services secretary, Michael Leavitt, argued in a recent television appearance, states that cover middle-income children as well as the poor are essentially telling people to “cancel your private insurance and we’ll have the government pay for it.”

There are several things wrong with that claim.

The article then goes on to cite studies and statistics which blow the opponents of the recent bill out of the water.

It is funny when things I knew all along, which are pood on by right wing partisans, need to be studied by supposedly better educated/qualified people than I am...net result, I was right all along.

Can anyone let the PTB know that they can save millions in study group moneys by just paying me for the right answers?

Only rich wingers in la-la land who haven't had to worry about the cost of insurance since they made their nut think health insurance is affordable at $1000+ month. I find the hundred twenty a month painful, especially when I am paying out more than I get back. An OB exam should NOT involve co-pays and lab fees not covered to the tune of more than my monthly premium. A NORMAL OB exam. My insurance is pitiful, but if catastrophe happens I'll at least get into the hospital.

The thing that gripes me is I am required by law to have car insurance, ( my premiums could have bought about 5 brand new vehicles over the years, after subtracting my couple of claims). I am required to have homeowners, or no mortgage. Yet being at least somewhat healthy is important to things like not wrecking my car, or accidentally firing my house and no entity says I must have insurance. I think if the state requires something like insurance, the state has the responsibility to pay for it, just as they say my kids must be educated, the state pays for this unless I choose a private school.

I think that back when man lived at a more tribal level, it worked that if a disaster happened everyone pitched in to help, unless of course the disaster did in the whole bunch. Insurance came about when the tribes could no longer care for their own, and you became part of a bigger group. We are now in a global, individualized, compartmentalized society. We must have insurance to survive. We must have certain insurances required by the government. I think if government can offer insurance to stock barons and industries in the form of interest rate manipulation, money printing, and price supports, it is time a bare bones government sponsored everything insurance went into effect. If you want better, you pay for it. Basic auto liability. Basic preventive and acute care and prescription drugs. low ball homeowners and renters insurance, a death benefit equal to the cost of a simple cremation and 3 months wages (if you have a spouse, significant other common law relationship, or kids).

This isn't socialism, anymore than guaranteed government loans to business or tariff protection is. It is an investment in infrastructure by taking basic care of the human being part of the country. Just as an education through high school was deemed an appropriate thing to provide, so should making sure families can eat after the breadwinner dies, so should seeing that transportation where mass transit is not an option does not fail, just as helping a homeowner rebuild after a fire used to be a community affair in the tribal era, the government needs to fill the role once claimed by the clan.

If it is done as tax credits for up the dollar amount for minimal coverages on the above, the very poor have incentive to sign up-they'll get money back if they earn little enough. The working poor to lower middle class have the insurance they must have without going hungry to do it, as well as ones who now have coverage(saving society money in the long term) who didn't. Those who scrimped in order to have the minimum will have extra money in their pocket-stimulate the economy, maybe even spend some of it on a bit better prescription plan, or eye care. The well-off who pay for all these things find some more money in their pockets, which will go back into the economy. Will the guy paying $12000 for insurance drop all his private stuff to avoid paying anything? Or keep his and take the $6000 credit? If he's got a half mil life insurance package, he isn't going to drop it for one paying $50000 tops just because it costs less-he could have already had the one that cost less. And a lot of the marginal folks with decent coverages at okay prices would keep to the private, especially since it would be subsidized.

Note the folks terrified that someone will possibly choose public health care in lieu of private. The accusations are always that they are greedy parasites if they would do such a thing. All I can say is "project much?" I have to assume that the panic among the reich wing is because they cannot conceive of anyone acting other than the way they themseves would act if given the chance to save a few bucks. They are afraid someone somewhere is going to die with more toys than they do, scared somehow some brown or yellow or black person is going to get ahead of them because someone gave them a hand. Oh, bailouts of ne'er do well sons like Geoge Bush is different, it all stays in the "rich men's club". Start helping the ignorant masses, and it can lead to nothing but cheaters and grifters (liars are incapable of seeing truthfullness, the thinks everyone is out to rip him off, the greedy who want more and more are incapable of seeing a person who could be satisfied with just enough for a change.