President Bush has vetoed the SCHIP legislation passed by Congress. Currently, SCHIP is a targeted program that provides health insurance for children of low income families. However, the legislation Bush just vetoed would expand the program by providing it to children in middle class familes. In the process, the legislation would increasingly substitute government programs and taxpayer dollars for private coverage and funding.
That, of course, is the Democrats’ goal — to develop a middle class health care entitlement program as a precursor to a government takeover of health care. In the process, though, the new SCHIP legislation would basically double the cost of covering an uninsured child. Moreover, as passed by Congress, the program will become financially unsustainable by 2013. The Dems set it up this way to make the program appear “revenue neutral” in the short-run.
UPDATE: When he vetoed the SCHIP expanaion expansion, President Bush said:
The policies of the government ought to be help poor children and to focus on poor children. And the policies of the government ought to be help people find private insurance, not federal coverage.
Notice: All comments are subject to moderation. Our comments are intended to be a forum for civil discourse bearing on the subject under discussion. Commenters who stray beyond the bounds of civility or employ what we deem gratuitous vulgarity in a comment — including, but not limited to, “s***,” “f***,” “a*******,” or one of their many variants — will be banned without further notice in the sole discretion of the site moderator.