Why are Democrats mad at Bush for giving free health care to those that need it?

Question

Late last week, the Bush administration announced plans to curb the practice of states putting already-insured and non-needy children on the rolls of a federal program that subsidizes health insurance for uninsured and needy children.

Democrats were outraged.

“This is a political attempt by the administration to try to intimidate states,” Rep. Rahm Emanuel (D., Ill.) told the Washington Post.

The Democratic Congress had just passed two versions of a bill to let states expand the State Children’s Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) to children in families making three and even four times the federal poverty level ($60,000 to $80,000 for a family of four). With his new rules and his veto threats against their bill, President Bush is spoiling their plans.

But aside from the feigned outrage always involved in politics, why are Democrats be so unhappy about dedicating federal money only to those who need it, and not to those who don’t? In most parts of the United States, a family of four making $60,000 is doing pretty well and doesn’t need a handout or even a “hand up.”

The answer is that Democrats in Congress do not just want the government to cover the needy and uninsured. They want to legislate incrementally until they have established universal or near-universal taxpayer-funded coverage, beginning with children.

This is not the paranoid idea of a few conservatives, but a plan outlined in an April 9, 1993, memo from Hillary Clinton’s health-care task force. The memo, which became public later only thanks to lawsuits forcing sunshine rules on the task force, was previously mentioned in a Washington Times report ten years ago, when the SCHIP program was first created.

The memo describes three possible methods of implementing universal health coverage. The first two involve a state-by-state phase-in of plans that involve state and federal government funds and employer mandates for the working uninsured.

But “Option 3” would have implemented a similar program by population group, beginning with children and expanding from there. The proposed name for the program, Kids First, had deeper meaning than one might suspect: it was the front end of a plan that would later cover everyone.

The memo states that:

Part I Kids First is really a precursor to the new system. It is intended to be freestanding and administratively simple, with States given broad flexibility in its design so that it can be easily folded into existing/future program structures.

Part II of this proposal involves the development of purchasing cooperative (PC) structures and the actual phase-in of all other population groups within the PC system.
The memo also laid out a timeline: By January 1995, all employers were to be mandated to purchase health insurance for their employees’ children. By July 1997, all employers would have been required to purchase health plans for the employees themselves.

By January 1998, self-insured adults would have been required to buy policies under the same “purchasing cooperative” structure. The state would then roll into the system children on other government programs besides Kids First, and then perhaps even “early retirees with benefits.”

This grand plan never came to pass because HillaryCare failed. But although Kids First is different in many ways from SCHIP (which has no employer mandates, for example), the political strategy is the same. It fits perfectly with Democrats’ current legislative attempt to expand the program to wealthier families.

It does not fit at all with the Bush administration’s new rules, announced last week. These would, under most circumstances, bar SCHIP for children in families making more than 250 percent of the poverty level (according to 2007 poverty guidelines form the Department of Health and Human Services, that’s a family of four earning $51,625 a year).

The administration’s new rules seem pretty reasonable — even tame. They would make states insure 95 percent of poor children (below 200 percent of the poverty level) before diverting their federal grants on the middle class (above 250 percent). Critics note that no state has put 95 percent of its uninsured children on SCHIP, but this would suggest that states have failed their mission, not that they should start giving handouts to people who can easily insure their own children.

In order to prevent non-needy families and their employers from dropping private coverage and putting children on the dole, the administration will also require non-needy children to be uninsured for a year before they are eligible for SCHIP.

If the income threshold for SCHIP already sounds high for a family of four, it is more so for larger families. My father provided a pretty good life to our family of seven on his comfortable but modest university professor’s salary. He says he never even thought of going on welfare — but maybe he should have. Even Bush’s new “draconian” SCHIP rules would have allowed all five of us kids to go on government health insurance, as long as Dad was making $77,725 or less. The Democrats’ plan would have covered us all on a $93,000 salary, or even (had we lived in New York State) $124,000! (I have trouble imagining my own mother as a six-figure welfare queen.)

The Democrats’ SCHIP outrage, while perhaps politically savvy (who could oppose insuring children?), has nothing to do with the real problem of those poor and uninsured. There are several ways the government could make insurance affordable — President Bush has proposed a generous health-insurance tax deduction, and others have proposed a repeal or circumvention of burdensome state0insurance mandates that massively inflate prices.

But the Democrats’ expansion of SCHIP into the middle class is not a solution to any existing problem. It is welfare for those already faring well, and with an eye toward expanding government in the future.

Answer 1

You lost every one with all your words.

Answer 2

Bush is stealing the Democrats's thunder by (gasp!) actually focusing the money on truly poor people.

When you see Democrats being outraged by something like this, it only proves that they are solely interested in increasing their political power by making people dependent on bloated social programs.

If the Democrats were honest and truly compassionate, they would welcome Bush's plan. After all, he is directing the money directly on the people who need it: the truly poor.

Of course, Democrats don't operate with logic, only "feeling". Bush's "No Child Left Behind Act" is designed to force schools to actually teach or close their doors. Instead, the Democrats would like to just indistriminately throw more and more money at the problem, without any benchmark for real results.

This is just another power grab by the Democrats.

Democrats know the only way they can promote another costly, ill-conceived program (as welfare was, before the Republicans under Newt Gingrich reformed it) is to present sob stories of people too poor to afford adequate coverage. Bush has already proposed very generous tax subsidies for people who purchase their own private health insurance. Hence, cost is much less of a factor.

Democrats are trying to give us small doses of universal health care, starting with children.

Answer 3

This Obama administration will probably make a big fanfare about putting illegal immigrants on for free health care, but then will quietly take them off the rolls as time goes on... just like Massachusetts. You have to remember that Democrats have historically ben audibly FOR the underdog, but then votes in legislation that will bring themselves the most poswer. Massachusetts' universal medical program is no longer universal. Coverage is being dropped for 30,000 because not enough money is around to pay for everyone. There's a lesson in this for Congress. Unable to pay the enormous cost of Commonwealth Care, the state's subsidized insurance plan for low-income residents, Massachusetts lawmakers are throwing legal immigrants off the rolls. The state simply does not have enough money to pay its bills, and cuts have to be made somewhere.

Answer 4

Is this an article written by someone else that you posted without crediting the author? Just wondering. If you post someone else's writing you're supposed to name the source.

That said, income in America is relative to where you live. A family of 4 trying to get by on $80,000 a year on NYC would be considered moderate income at most. If a family of 4 were living on $60,000 on L.A. that might even be considered a low income.

Either way, depending on where you live, a family of 4 living on $80,000 is not wealthy at all. In NYC or L.A., they aren't starving, but they may very well have trouble meeting catastrophic medical needs.

Answer 5

Ever been sick?
Ever get a hospital bill for an injury?
Ever live in New Jersey, one of the states protesting Bush's "curbs?"
Do you know that a gallon of milk in New York City
cost $5.49 yesterday?
Do you know how much milk two kids drink every day?
Do you know what housing costs in the tri-state area of NY,NJ, and CT?
Do you know what property taxes in this area are?
Do you know what income taxes are in this area?
Have you any idea what health insurance costs per month for a family of four in this area?
Do you live in Wyoming or Montana or some other place where costs are low?
Do you know that the "average" wage in the US is $55,238, according to government figures published on Monday?
Do you know what "averaging" means?
Here's how it works:
Take all the earnings of worker, their salaries and commissions.
Divide by the number of workers.
That's the average.
So, with a whole bunch of "workers" earning millions, and, in some cases, billions, that huge amount of money skews the average so it looks like people are doing much better than they really are. In fact, "the average incomes remained lower in 2005 than five years earlier. ... Many Americans are paying a larger share of their health care costs and have had their retirement benefits reduced, ..."
Government figures stated the following:
"Total income listed on tax returns grew every year after World War II, with the a single one year exception, until 2001, making the five-year period of lower average incomes and four years of lower total incomes A NEW EXPERIENCE for the MAJORITY of AMERICANS born since 1945."
{I put in the capitals} The source for this information is the IRS, a US government agency.

But, wait! There's more!"The growth in total incomes was CONCENTRATED among those making more than $1 million. The number of such taxpayers grew by more than 26%, to 303,817 in 2005, from 239,685 in 2000. These individuals , who constitute less than a quarter of 1 percent of all taxpayers, reaped almost 47 percent of the total income gains in 2005, compared with 2000.
People with incomes of more than a MILLION DOLLARS also received 62% of the savings from the REDUCED TAX RATES on long term capital gains and dividends that President Bush signed into law in 2003, according to a separate analysis by Citizens for Tax Justice, a group that points out policies that favor the rich."
The middle class American is being squeezed to death. Bush proposes a health insurance tax DEDUCTION. You have to be making a h of a lot of money to benefit from that deduction.
OH, and by the way, the Alternative Minimum Tax,
kicks in at about 40K salary, affecting this year millions more people.
So what middle class are you talking about?

Answer 6

You know very well that Bush isn’t interested in providing free health care for anyone. The Democrats want a higher income limit on health care for children because many low income and even middle class families don’t have health insurance and/or have difficulty with paying for proper health care for their children even with insurance.

Preventive care and decent health care for children in this country is an investment in the future.

Answer 7

When Bush was governor of Texas, he had to be sued because he let all the CHIPs money sit gathering dust for two years and refused to set up a plan to insure the children at all! I think that tells us how he really feels about insuring the needy.

Answer 8

perhaps the democrats believe that only the people on and below the poverty line will get help and not to low income families that need it too

Answer 9

We need health care for the ones that qualify. The govenment can figure that out, can't they?

Answer 10

Gee whiz! I gave up on reading all of your soap-box sermon and have no more of an answer than this. Good luck. :-)