The SCHIP is Sailing
Thursday, January 15th, 2009 By Marc KilmerThe U.S. House yesterday voted to expand the State Children’s Health Insurance Program (SCHIP), which helps fund state government health care program. Originally intended for children of the working poor, it has evolved to pay for adult health coverage (in some states more adults than children are served by the program), health care for middle class kids. Now, if this legislation becomes law (as it almost certainly will), states will get even more money to provide health care coverage and, in a reversal of the 1996 welfare reform law, children of legal immigrants will be allowed to enroll. To pay for this smokers will be forking over another 61 cents for every pack of cigarettes they buy.
What this all means is that states will be tempted to expand spending during a time where they should be cutting spending. Sure, proponents say it’s “for the kids,” but in reality most of the kids being covered by this program expansion would have had health insurance anyway. For many (up to 60% of recipients), all it does is move children (and adults) off private insurance onto insurance paid for by your tax dollars.
And anyone who thinks the cost of this program will be funded by a cigarette tax is deluded. Spending on government health programs like Medicaid and SCHIP increase year to year. Cigarette tax revenue usually decreases. There is no way that a declining revenue source like cigarette tax revenue will pay for the ever-increasing burden this SCHIP expansion will place on governments. So where will government get the rest of the money? From everyone else who pays taxes.
SCHIP is a bad program that makes little fiscal or policy sense. But, hey, it’s for the kids, so let’s not oppose it. After all, a program’s intentions are more important than than the actual content of the legislation, right?
Tags: cigarette taxes, Health care, SCHIP
