SCHIP AND THE ENTITLEMENT MENTALITY

• First of all a brief historic review of SCHIP.  It was created in 1997 by a Republican-controlled Congress.  The original idea was for the US government to subsidize state governments in providing health insurance for children from households not poor enough to qualify for Medicaid, but not affluent enough to purchase health insurance.  The threshold for the benefit was about 200% above the poverty line.  Had Bush not vetoed the newly revised SCHIP, it would have included children who come from families whose income is 400% above the poverty line (i.e., an annual family income of $83,000 for a family of four).  Mike Leavitt, Secretary of Health and Human Services, contends that the SCHIP would ensure 2.8 million more children, with 1.1 million of them from families for whom SCHIP would now mean they could drop their private insurance.  Is this a wise thing for the federal government to do?  George Will writes: “the new SCHIP would be a long stride toward unlimited federal funds working as incentives for states to expand eligibility to more and more affluent families.”  The result of the new SCHIP would be that more families are now utterly dependent on the US government.  On last week’s Issues, I made the distinction between temperamental conservatives and dispositional conservatives.  In a very real sense, the new SCHIP violates the tenets of both brands of conservatism, for it violates not only the fundamental proposition of personal freedom but also the value of society as an organism.

• Second, how could something like this occur?  Initially, President Bush proposed a $5 billion increase of SCHIP, over a five year period.  However, the Senate voted a $35 billion increase and the House a $50 billion increase.  Both agreed on the Senate increase, which the President vetoed.  The bill proposed that a $.61 increase in the cigarette tax was to fund this additional entitlement.  As Will writes, “So, this health legislation depends on a constantly large and renewable supply of smokers—22 million new ones.  This ‘progressive’ measure requires a regressive tax (smokers are predominantly and increasingly lower class) levied to expand subsidized health insurance ever upward into the middle class.”  Quite frankly, this idea is absurd!!!  Politicians supporting the new SCHIP say that it is all “about the children.”  It symbolizes a profound debate going on within our political culture and our entire civilization:  What is the role of the national government in our lives?  Is it a good thing to create increasingly more dependency on that government?  Is dependency a good thing?  Those who support the new SCHIP would answer yes to each of these questions.  It is so important, they suggest, for the government to help the children.  It is wise and prudent for the national government to foster greater dependency by the middle class (not only the poor) on the government.  The new SCHIP is not really diabolical or evil.  But it is rather silly for those supporters to contend that the new SCHIP is “all about the children.”  It is not!  It is a symbol of the profound and deep-seated differences emerging between those who want to reduce the role of the national government in our lives and those who want to expand it.  Creating greater dependency means heavier taxes and/or greater borrowing by the government.  And, since Social Security will soon be insolvent, is it wise to increase entitlement programs that will continue to swell and grow?  In 2009, 78 million baby boomers will become 62 years of age.  A calamitous disaster is facing this nation.  Instead of dealing with that pending calamity, the Congress is creating more entitlement programs!  That is not good government!!

See George Will in Newsweek (8 October 2007), p. 76.