Marching toward HillaryCare
August 2, 2007| By Nathaniel Ward
The House of Representatives voted yesterday to approve a troubling expansion of a federal health care benefit for children. And it’s all part of a plan crafted nearly 15 years ago to impose socialized medicine through the back door.
“The march toward HillaryCare,” writes Heritage Foundation Vice President Mike Franc, is well underway. But Heritage is there with the facts to draw attention to this looming socialism.
Take our poll: Should Congress create a new entitlement for health care that puts us on the road to socialized medicine?
The State Children’s Health Insurance Program was originally designed to help low-income families pay for health care for their kids. But liberals—claiming the mantle of “helping the children”—want to expand SCHIP to cover more families—even those making enough to get hit with the Alternative Minimum Tax on high earners.
Heritage fellow Ernest Istook, a former member of Congress, explains what this debate is really about in a new Heritage video.
Bob Moffit and Cheryl Smith of Heritage’s Center for Health Policy Studies note that the SCHIP bill “greatly expands dependency of millions on government health care, undermines private health plans, reduces choice for Medicare beneficiaries, and saddles taxpayers with a permanent new entitlement.”
Back in 1993, Franc writes, a liberal task force outlined a plan to implement socialized health care through a program dubbed “Kids First.” This program would be later expanded to include other “population groups.”
The new SCHIP expansion plans are right on track to achieve this goal. Franc notes that “liberal lawmakers now want to expand SCHIP to ‘new populations’ by increasing eligibility for this welfare-style benefit to children (including ‘slackers’ up to age 24) in households with incomes as high as 400% of the federal poverty level.”
Congress’ own analysis finds that the expansion, funded through an ill-conceived tobacco tax, would place two million kids who already have health coverage onto government rolls.
“Liberals also pander to illegal immigrants,” Franc continues, “with a provision that would eliminate the requirement that persons applying for Medicaid or SCHIP services show proof of citizenship.”
There are other alternatives, however, that rely on proven successes in free enterprise to ensure low-income children get access to health care. One proposal Franc highlights would discard the entitlement approach and establish a tax credit for health care, allowing individuals to more easily purchase insurance that suits their needs.
Nathaniel Ward is the Editor of MyHeritage.org—a website for members and supporters of The Heritage Foundation.
