June 29, 2007

Ah, the blessings of schalami schlice schocialism in health care. I refer, of course, to the latest effort in Congress to expand SCHIP---the State Children's Health Insurance Program---to children in families with incomes up to 400 percent of the federal poverty line. Yes, 400 percent: That's $82,600 annually for a family of four. In 2005, median income for family households was about $57,300. This effort is projected to cost $50 billion over five years, and whaddya know: That is the rough cost of the Medicare Advantage program, in which federal subsidies for private health coverage engender competition among private insurers to satisfy the heterogeneous preferences of customers, something for which Congress and the federal bureaucracy are not noted. Under the PAYGO budget rules, new spending is supposed to be offset by new revenues and/or cuts in existing programs; and so it is not hard to infer that the Democrats, anxious to avoid comparisons between the private and public satisfaction of patients, would dearly love to get rid of Medicare Advantage so as to fund this huge expansion in schingle-payer SCHIP schocialism, a program taylor-made for the wealth redistribution games that are the very essence of Beltway life.

A number of states now are expanding SCHIP to adults. Doesn't the "C" in SCHIP stand for children? Well, yes. But fear not, dear reader. As adults become increasingly dependent upon the Beltway for health care and myriad other goodies, the infantilization of America will proceed apace. Thus does the political class indeed look upon all Americans as children. It's a lotta bullSCHIP.

Posted by Benjamin Zycher at June 29, 2007 08:22 AM

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