posted
Pretty much. What is he thinking? Is he trying to get people to hate on Republicans right before the next presidental races?
Posts: 9942 | Registered: Mar 2003
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posted
Wow, and I thought my phrasing of it was a bit inflammatory.
We were just complaining that Congress was wasting their time writing entries in their slam book about Move On. Well, they did something real and good and productive, and the President killed it, and there's still a chance to save it.
Posts: 1753 | Registered: Aug 2002
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posted
The Republican party is trying to regain the label of fiscal conservatives after the whole spending like drunken sailors when they were in power and the President feels that the expansions in the CHIP bill are too much and that it is a step towards socialized healthcare.
But yeah, vetoing health care for poor kids is going to be a pretty unpopular move and is going to likely going to bite some people right on the butt come elections.
Posts: 10177 | Registered: Apr 2001
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So your representative was one of the eight weenies who didn't participate in this vote? I just hate it when reps do that - come on people, you're hired to take a stand.
CT, I thought immediately of you.
Posts: 1753 | Registered: Aug 2002
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posted
At first I thought their had to be a rider or something that Bush objected to, but I just don't see one, and Bush cited "federalising healthcare" as his reason.
This just makes no sense to me. When Orrin Hatch and President Bush are on opposite sides of an issue, something is seriously wrong.
I hope they can rally the remaining 15 Republican votes needed in the house to override the veto and that the vote in the Senate remains consistant the next time around.
edit: My stupid representative voted nay. I'll be writing him tonight.
Posts: 14316 | Registered: Jul 2005
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The non-voters will likely vote for it later. I think they were staking out advantageous positions for the post veto bargaining without voting against health care for poor kids.
Posts: 10177 | Registered: Apr 2001
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quote:At first I thought their had to be a rider or something that Bush objected to, but I just don't see one, and Bush cited "federalising healthcare" as his reason.
I think it may have lacked an important part of the Bush supported federalized healthcare medicare drug program that the Republicans pushed past Democratic objections: huge cash payouts to drug companies.
Posts: 10177 | Registered: Apr 2001
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posted
I hate providing information to political people. It feels like giving my kids' photos to pedophiles.
Posts: 14554 | Registered: Dec 1999
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I am pretty sure my Representative voted for this.
edit: By "pretty sure" I mean, I haven't found the roll call but she would likely have to have been tied up in a basement somewhere not to have voted for this.
I have given up writing anything but "atta girl" letters to my Representative. She is usually way ahead of me.
Posts: 11187 | Registered: Sep 2005
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posted
My rep created the CHIP program for PA when she was a state senator. I haven't checked for her Yes vote either.
Posts: 10177 | Registered: Apr 2001
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I don't know why the republicans think that they can buy the votes of people who believe in entitlements. Those people will always vote for democrats.
He should have been vetoing grotesque spending bills like this his entire time in office, not right now at the end.
He's already earned the ire of the fiscal conservatives. He can't get us back. I'm glad he vetoed this appalling waste of money, but he's already poured the treasury down the Kharybdis of entitlement.
You may now go back your regularly scheduled cries of "...but the children!"
Posts: 7085 | Registered: Apr 2001
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quote:Originally posted by Javert Hugo: CT, I thought immediately of you.
katharina, it breaks my heart. If SCHIP isn't funded sufficiently, the real-world implications for tens of thousands of kids are staggering.
And oh my god, the ERs are going to be even more overstretched. They can't turn anyone away by federal regulation. So the asthma attacks, the pneumonias, the abscesses that seed out heart valves ... Good God.
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Edited to add: not a regularly scheduled cry, The Pixiest, but a well-informed cry.
I appreciate that you may find this a stalwart rallying point, but I am not convinced that you are fully aware of how the outcomes of this program have been measured, both overall and as a dollars per head cost savings.
Posts: 14017 | Registered: May 2000
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Pixiest, it will cost thousands upon thousands of dollars more to treat these kids in the country's ERs. Not to mention being much, much, worse for their health.
Posts: 9866 | Registered: Apr 2002
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(And darn straight, considering that half the kids in his district are on CHIP. Including mine.)
Posts: 21182 | Registered: Sep 2004
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quote:I'm glad he vetoed this appalling waste of money
I'm not sure you and I have the same defintion of waste here. Money spent on preventive care, as a significant portion of at least the PA CHIP is, results in overall less societal costs for health care. This is especially true in the case of children. If the government is spending $5 of my tax money now so that I don't see a $20 increase in my health insurance premiums later, that isn't, to me, a waste of money.
Posts: 10177 | Registered: Apr 2001
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posted
There are several possible reasons to vote against it.
First, the budget estimates are intentionally deceptive. They're based on the assumption that, after a short period of time, SCHIP funding will be reduced to even less than the level it is currently at (heh, so everyone who voted for it could be accurately said to have 'voted to reduce SCHIP funding below current levels'). Of course, the bill's supporters know that won't happen. The actual cost of the bill is probably over twice what it purports to be. This is not a small problem.
Second, there's research suggesting it will have significant unintentional adverse affects. Specifically, when cheaper (but with much less coverage) health insurance has become available to lower middle class families before, they have strongly substituted for the new health insurance, dropping their previous, more expensive, but much better insurance. The upwards expansion of the income cap on eligibility is into that income range. The estimate I'm seeing is that one in three kids moving to SCHIP under the eligibility expansion would be doing so by dropping better insurance.
The intended funding source is a tobacco tax. Tobacco taxes are regressive. That is taxing the poor in order to help the poor avoid health insurance.
Posts: 15770 | Registered: Dec 2001
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CT: All social programs are an apalling waste of money. Most of the money goes to pay the administration and a little bit dribbles out to the people they're supposed to help.
Of course, it doesn't help in the long run. Government becomes Daddy. This harms the family, encourages illegal immigration ("That job is below me, I'll just take government assistance and let someone else do it." ) and slows the economy. On TOP of the injustice that is wealth redistribution. But this is a debate fit for another thread. A debate we've beaten to death before already.
But don't worry. As a libertarian, especially in the bay area, my vote doesn't count.
Posts: 7085 | Registered: Apr 2001
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There are 9 million uninsured kids in the US. If 4 million kids drop out of private insurance in favor of SCHIP in order to get those 9 million covered, I'm okay with that.
Posts: 9866 | Registered: Apr 2002
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Oh, and I'm strongly in favor of tobacco taxes-- research has shown that they reduce the rate of tobacco use, especially among teens, and that is something I am fond of. It's a pet cause, in fact.
Posts: 21182 | Registered: Sep 2004
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quote:Originally posted by The Pixiest: CT: All social programs are an apalling waste of money. Most of the money goes to pay the administration and a little bit dribbles out to the people they're supposed to help.
Ah. So, if a social program were to have most of the money going to those it serves rather than administration, and if that money were to be shown by rigorous outcomes standards to be successful in achieving the stated goals, then you'd be for that particular program?
Or this an ideological stance for you, independent of the facts of the situation? (Honest question, because it seems to me to be the latter, although I read you now as claiming the former.)
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fugu13, that is useful information to pursue further. Thanks.
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[Edited to add: At this point, I agree with dkw and ketchupqueen, but I am willing to keep reading and discussing it.]
Posts: 14017 | Registered: May 2000
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CT: And free of unintended consquences? Are these magic social programs?
I figured I'd been around long enough for everyone to know that I'm against every social program on principle.
Limited, voluntary, charity is great. So long as you don't let people get dependant on it.
So long as the question "Who will take care of my son/daughter?" is still firmly lodged in the back of the minds of every father... and his friends, family and neighbors.
But that's gone now. Everyone knows the government will take care of them.
Posts: 7085 | Registered: Apr 2001
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posted
dkw: it isn't just dropping out of private insurance, its dropping out of substantially better private insurance. Are you okay with 4 million kids having worse healthcare so that 9 million can be covered?
Posts: 15770 | Registered: Dec 2001
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"Everyone" has never tried to get public assistence if "everyone" thinks that the government will take care of them.
Posts: 9866 | Registered: Apr 2002
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Fugu: If they still have the basic level of care offered by SCHIP, yes I am.
And if it means their parents have a little extra money to buy them better food, new clothes, and maybe take them to the zoo now and then, I like that too.
Posts: 9866 | Registered: Apr 2002
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quote:Originally posted by The Pixiest: CT: And free of unintended consquences? Are these magic social programs?
[Edited out for snark. My apologies.]
quote:I figured I'd been around long enough for everyone to know that I'm against every social program on principle.
I had thought that about you, too, which is why I was surprised to see you giving claims of fact rather than just ideology here. It seems it may have been rhetoric, which I can better understand (if identified as such), even if I disagree. It is the rhetoric that looks like a testable claim of fact which perturbs me.
Posts: 14017 | Registered: May 2000
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I'm not terribly familiar with the studies you are talking about fugu, but from what I picked up in the NPR segments about this, aren't they pretty heavily dipsuted?
Also, as I understand it, one of the major aims of the expansion of this program is to allow states to expand coverage in high cost of living areas. That is, the eligibilty requirements are tied to the federal poverty rate, which can cause a problem when you looking at the disparity between families in NYC versus, say, North Dakota. If I understood correctly, the drop out numbers get kind of skewed when you factor in local cost of living.
Posts: 10177 | Registered: Apr 2001
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CT: Can you show me some social programs that have a high percentage of wealth transfer that actually reaches their intended targets without unintended consquences?
We get social program after social program. All with the best of intentions. They sound GREAT on paper. They never live up to what they're supposed to do, they always cost more and they NEVER go away.
How many times do we have to get burned before we say "No More?"
Posts: 7085 | Registered: Apr 2001
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quote:Originally posted by The Pixiest: CT: Can you show me some social programs that have a high percentage of wealth transfer that actually reaches their intended targets without unintended consquences?
Hmmm.
I don't think I'll go to the effort, since it is a rhetorical exercise for you. I have done this elsewhere at this site before, should anyone be so inclined to search, but it drains me to do it over and over again. [Edited to add: I do not know whether you would consider it a "high percentage," but it was certainly "more," which is all your initial claim in this thread asserted in negation.]
That drain isn't worth it to me when it is explictly acknowledged that the outcomes wouldn't make a difference to you.
quote:We get social program after social program. All with the best of intentions. They sound GREAT on paper. They never live up to what they're supposed to do, they always cost more and they NEVER go away.
Interestingly, this is not true, but I understand and accept that you believe it to be so, and will continue to believe it to be so regardless of what I say. That's okay. I certainly do not wish to prevent you from stating your beliefs, and I have no intention of bringing more useless clanging discord into the world (and Hatrack, as a part of it). I do think disagreement is appropriate and worth noting, though.
quote:How many times do we have to burned before we say "No More?"
If you insist on assuming a priori that everything is burning, regardless of whether reality resists that preconception, then yes, you will continue to "burn."
posted
Let's see . . . an example of a program that has a ten year history of doing exactly what it set out to do . . . maybe a federal-state partnership with block grants and matching funds that allows a fair measure of local control while holding states responsible for meeting the goals of the program . . . something like . . . The State Children's Health Insurance Program!
This is a good and sucessful program. It needs to be reauthorized.
Posts: 9866 | Registered: Apr 2002
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Well, if it wasn't for CHIP, my kids wouldn't have health care.
We make too much to qualify for Medi-Cal once the kids turn one; my husband has insurance through work but it would be too expensive to add me or my kids to his insurance. We couldn't make ends meet if we did.
Instead, we pay into Healthy Families (based on our income) and my kids get coverage through the same HMO as my husband, but have a lower co-pay, no deductible, and better coverage than he does. If my daughter has a medical emergency, I can actually take her in. She gets checkups instead of just shots at the free clinic.
I really don't mind the "unintended consequences" if it means that my kids have health coverage.
Posts: 21182 | Registered: Sep 2004
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Keep in mind there was no disagreement between Congress and the President on re-authorizing, or that some increase in funding was needed.
I'm fairly sure there are far better approaches to the problem than this bill. I am much less sure whether or not this bill was good enough to warrant passing it, particularly in view of the alternative (also a funding increase, just not as big a one).
And I am not a fan of consequences, unintended or intended, that significantly harm the health of millions even if that improves the health of some other millions.
Posts: 15770 | Registered: Dec 2001
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(That's what I want to know. My kids get much better coverage than you can buy privately, on a par with group plans, and better than most of those.)
Posts: 21182 | Registered: Sep 2004
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I don't see how most people can afford private insurance and I work for an insurance company. Without some limited social programs, the country would be a lot worse off. Sure, there's abuse, there's abuse in any situation or system. The key is to get rid of the corruption or limit it while still helping people who need it. Most people who are on public assistant are not lazy people who will just collect checks. A lot have children they need to care for, their circumstances have shifted. Besides, I'd really rather my tax dollars go towards helping people, even if there are a handful of sloths.
Posts: 9942 | Registered: Mar 2003
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Bin will be using CHIP when she turns one. I know a lot of people making use of these programs. Keep in mind, that jobs that require large amounts of education pay little to nothing while training. So, doctors, lawyers, phds, etc- if they had kids before like 28, they are going to qualify.
Posts: 1001 | Registered: Mar 2006
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I agree that CHIP is a successful, needed program, and a model for appropriate Federal intervention. (In fact, as an old conservative socialist, I am not, in principal, opposed to a national single payer type plan.) However, the specter of families dropping avalable insurance does have some validity. Our guard union negotiated a "buy-out" provision for health insurance. It was supposed to have been a benefit for older guards who had other insurance in retirement plans from previous employment. In practice, young families have taken that option, (bought new pickup trucks) and moved their children to the CHIP. The parents are young and therefore invincible. As of this date the "plant" union has refused to follow suit.
Posts: 1167 | Registered: Oct 2005
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posted
Ironic that the leader of a party that advocates strong family values doesn't much seem to support the health of the children of the poorest of those families.
Strong family values...right.
More than ever I'm in favor of MORE nationalized healthcare and less private healthcare. If you want to buy your own super expensive plan that covers everything, then go for it. But the least among us who can't afford healthcare cost us MORE when they are uninsured than it would cost for us to insure them, so why not insure them? It's the same argument I used when it comes to the Green movement, it's not about socialized vs. unsocialized, it's not about economy vs. environment, it's about doing what is more efficient and cheapest. People just can't wrap their heads around the idea that a focus on preventive care is important and largely ignored at the moment, it makes overall healthcare cheaper in the same way that more expensive energy efficient products now make all energy consumption later cheaper.
This isn't about creating a nanny state. It's about creating a healthy population, cheaper. Hating socialized medicine just because you want to hate socialized medicine is stupid. Do what is best. Private insurance isn't best. Private industry is by its nature out for ONE THING above all else: Profit. National healthcare would be for one thing above all others too: Healthy people. So long as it is in the best financial interests of private insurers to deny claims, and for hospitals to not focus on preventing healthcare for people with diabetes because they make more money when they have to amputate a limb, our system is broken.
So, CHIP, good or bad? Good. Children are uninsured, their parents can't afford it, and without, kids wouldn't get regular checkups without putting their families in financial peril and ruination. When kids don't get regular checkups, it means they will get that care at the most expensive place possible: The ER. No CHIP means more expensive care, it means more unhealthy kids, and it keeps more families in despair and poverty. If you can have that and still feel good about America, then I really have to wonder where you're coming from. We champion self-reliance in America, but we also champion a people who take care of their own and each other.
Posts: 21898 | Registered: Nov 2004
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posted
Did we have another thread covering the expansions to the program or did I dream that? Cause I swear I remember seeing that Congress was going to raise the family income to $80,000 a year. People making that much can afford their own. Stay out of my pockets, please.
I don't mind helping people who make less than me. Or even as much as me with kids. I know I couldn't afford them on what I make. But we don't need to be covering everybody.
Posts: 2283 | Registered: Dec 2003
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I'd still like to see proof that CHIP insurance is not as good as other insurance. 'Cause from what I've seen, it's as good or better.
Posts: 21182 | Registered: Sep 2004
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