BuckeyeBlog

Yesterday a group of Senators sent a letter to President Bush urging him to rescind the recent administration rules designed to limit coverage under the State Children’s Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) to the poor and near-poor, not to middle-class children and adults. Senator Sherrod Brown was among the signatories.

The letter claims:

SCHIP provides health insurance to low-income children whose parents work. Unfortunately, for most, their parents earn too much to qualify for medicaid, yet cannot afford private coverage. … As access to private insurance has grown farther and farther out of reach of the working poor, many states have shown leadership by utilizing SCHIP to expand coverage.

As this report from 2004 (the last year for which I could find data) shows, in Ohio almost 80% of the kids who live in families between 200% and 300% of the federal poverty level (the income group to which the General Assembly recently expanded SCHIP eligibility) have private coverage. It is simply inaccurate to say that “most” of the families affected by the administration’s regulations “cannot afford private coverage.”

Furthermore, the uninsured rate for children in this group is a little over 8%. That is only a little worse than the uninsured rate for kids who live in families below 200% of the federal poverty level (and who are already eligible for SCHIP). To think that expanding eligiblity to kids in this higher income range will significantly reduce their uninsured rate is wishful thinking. Of course, paiting the President as being uncaring to the “woring poor,” regardless of the facts of the issue, is good politics for the Democrats.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, September 11th, 2007 at 3:05 pm and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.