S-Veto It
EDITORIAL S-Veto It You've heard the analogy. A national mandate requiring everyone to have health insurance is just like the requirement that drivers buy auto insurance. Mitt Romney, for one,...
...It's not a hedge against risk, as auto insurance is...
...The strategy behind this is hardly a secret...
...Likewise, with the program known as S-chip, which Congress voted to expand last week in the face of a certain veto by President Bush...
...It collapses at the outset because it's not a universal mandate...
...Only those who drive are required to...
...Do it for the sake of the taxpayers...
...Smart Republicans should make that their message...
...A healthy young man in Kentucky could pay $960 for a policy that would cost $5,880 in New Jersey...
...But first let's identify the reason the analogy is trotted out so often...
...And they are packaging it in a way that might sound appealing to otherwise hard-headed Republicans...
...The Congressional Budget Office says two million children would make the switch, and that is among the more conservative estimates...
...The Kentucky company couldn't sell the cheaper policy in New Jersey...
...You can buy a cheap policy from an out-of-state company...
...You have to buy auto insurance...
...Finally, there's the simple fact that most health insurance isn't insurance at all...
...Proponents justify the crowding-out as unavoidable in an otherwise good cause...
...Unlike health insurance, there's a national market for auto insurance...
...He must do it "for the sake of the kids," Durbin said...
...The analogy is bogus, and we'll deconstruct it in a moment...
...S-chip is an offer few could refuse...
...Rather than keep S-chip's cap at 200 percent of poverty ($41,300 for a family of four), the bill would raise it to 300 percent ($61,950) nationally and even higher in New Jersey ($72,285) and New York ($82,300...
...You have to buy health insurance...
...Many of them don't bother or can't afford insurance and drive anyway...
...Nearly 30 years ago, a young congressman from Michigan named David Stockman dubbed this phenomenon the "social pork barrel" in an article he wrote for The Public Interest...
...Preserving and extending consumer choice should be the order of the day...
...It makes compulsory health insurance sound as if the need for it is inarguable and unprob-lematic and no more controversial than insuring your car...
...That was S-chip's sole rationale...
...Millions of kids with private health insurance would drop that coverage and sign up for S-chip instead, because it's "free...
...Poor children, in other words...
...In most instances, it's merely a way for your employer, in lieu of higher salary, to pay your health bills, both minor and major...
...They treat as mean-spirited Bush's insistence that 95 percent of legitimately poor children—below 200 percent of poverty—be brought into S-chip before it's expanded...
...By including some of the middle class, a program ostensibly to aid the poor could attract Republican support on Capitol Hill...
...Sure enough, 18 Republican senators and 45 GOP members of the House voted for it...
...An aide to Senator Hillary Clinton did as well in describing her new health insurance initiative...
...Fred Barnes, for the Editors...
...Senator Dick Durbin adopted the usual smarmy tone in urging Bush to sign the bill...
...Advocates of a mandate are soft-pedaling what, in truth, is another lurch toward government-run health care...
...S-chip was created in 1997 with a single, stated purpose in mind: to offer federally subsidized health insurance to children ineligible for Medicaid but unable to afford private insurance...
...S-chip proponents scoot past this aspect of the program in a heartbeat and point to the uninsured children who will be insured...
...No one is forced to buy auto insurance...
...Only an ogre would raise an objection...
...There are problems with our health care system, but they won't be solved by creeping nationalization, sold with bogus analogies and federal payoffs to the middle class...
...You can buy only liability and not collision...
...And S-chip has...
...Now, with the new legislation, the S-chip subsidy would cover millions of middle-class kids...
...And President Bush should waste no time vetoing S-Chip...
...The new S-chip legislation is a particularly egregious example of this...
...So did CNN commentator Bill Schneider...
...This flexibility isn't the case with health insurance...
...If you have a history of safe driving, you get a large discount...
...Mitt Romney, for one, cited the analogy in touting his health care plan as governor of Massachusetts several years ago...
...The worst part of S-chip isn't its cost but the massive crowding-out effect it produces...
...Of course, extending a poverty program into the middle class isn't new...
...Now back to the auto insurance analogy...
...He said the mandate proposed by John Edwards is "just like automobile insurance...
Vol. 13 • October 2007 • No. 4
