Two Sides to Every Story?
posted by Frank Pasquale
As 43 governors and two-thirds of the Senate hope the President reconsiders his SCHIP veto, the NYT does a nice job exploring how individuals may be affected by recent shrinkage of the SCHIP program:
In South Jersey, Syeeba Palmer, a widow, earns too much to qualify for Medicaid coverage for her children, ages 2 and 5, because she receives $2,800 a month from her late husband’s Social Security. Ms. Palmer’s monthly mortgage payment is $2,400, she said. And since she was laid off from her job as a health insurance consultant several months ago, she said it cost an estimated $1,100 a month to continue to cover herself and her children. She decided not to get coverage for herself and to apply for New Jersey Family Care for the children. “If I lose this insurance, there is no way I can afford it on my own,” she said.
Reina Urquizo, a legal resident from El Salvador, works at a factory in Warren that makes cables for cellphones and other electronics. Her two sons, ages 2 and 9, were enrolled in the children’s insurance program, but they would no longer qualify under the new eligibility rule. While she has private insurance, the family cannot afford to cover her husband.
But those defending the SCHIP veto say that no one in the debate intends any of the potential hardship or anxiety here:
Everyone is pro-poor. There simply are different ways of being pro-poor: one way emphasizes federal programs and nationalized care, and one favors private initiatives and community empowerment.
But I have to wonder: how long do Urquizo and Palmer have to wait till “private initiatives and community empowerment” kick in to help them? The administration says it has its own method of solving the problem, but will that involve a “defining down” of insurance that compromises children’s health? And when the “the bottom 50% earn[] 12.8% of all income,” is it really fair to ask some of them to pay ever more for health insurance? Here’s the NYT editorial page on an SCHIP alternative:
President Bush’s preferred policy is to provide families with tax deductions to help pay for private insurance. Responsible economists estimate that such an approach would do far less to enroll uninsured children than would the proposed expansion of S-chip. The president’s own budget proposal for maintaining the current S-chip program is so stingy that it would not even cover the number of children currently enrolled — and would probably increase the number of children forced to go without health coverage by hundreds of thousands.
So one bottom line for SCHIP opponents might be this: if you believe that “private initiatives and community empowerment” will solve the problem, please give some sense of exactly how those work and how they will be funded. And if “tax deductions” are a potential solution, how long will we give that to work? As Keynes once quipped, in the long run we’re all dead.
Hat tip: Rick Garnett.
October 16, 2007 at 5:18 pm
Posted in: Health Law
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Responses (4)
Michael Risch - October 16, 2007 at 6:41 pm
I’m still waiting to hear the other side of this story…
I can understand that there might be disagreement about whether limited funds should be spent on SCHIP or somewhere else, but to claim that private charities will provide health insurance for children or anyone else seems pretty far fetched. I also think that tax deductions would have to be tax credits to do any real good, and probably refundable tax credits to boot. I don’t see that happening either.
merevaudevillian - October 17, 2007 at 9:20 am
I don’t think it’s an issue of a community-funded alternative or private charities giving away health insurance. Instead, I think most private initiatives focus on pulling people out of poverty, equipping them for employment, and then helping them secure jobs. If they’re gainfully employed, they have a much great opportunity at receiving benefits, including health insurance, or at the very least having the ability to purchase insurance plans on their own or place money in a medical savings account.
There’s no question that sometimes people say they “can’t afford” private coverage. But another function of private initiatives can be to teach budgeting and money-saving techniques. Too often, we think that a family can’t possibly live on $50,000 or $60,000, when frequently the money shortage comes from financial lifestyle choices, not financial inability to purchase insurance.
I acknowledge that private initiatives may be an perfect solution. But it’s certainly within the realm of imagination to think about private initiatives that help individuals receive health insurance.
Maryland Conservatarian - October 17, 2007 at 5:21 pm
..Ok – so why doesn’t the concerned John Corzine just have New Jersey pay for it. I don’t mean to be flippant about this but either NJ is a net giver to the federal treasury or a net taker. If it’s the former than we should cut their federal taxes in such a way that they can tax themselves even more to spend in a way they believe appropriate; if it’s the latter, tell me again why the citizens of other states should have to subsidize NJ’s own when most people elsewhere don’t live in housing justifying a mortgages of $2,400/month (at 8% interest over 30 years that’s a $250,000 mortgage).
Let’s remember, NJ’s coverage under SCHIP – at 3 1/2 times the poverty line – is the highest in the nation. We are not morally bound as a nation to make John Corzine look like a humanitarian
Achilles - October 18, 2007 at 9:19 pm
Frank Pasquale questions how the proposed alternatives to SCHIP will be funded. It’s obvious that SCHIP will be funded by selling government securities to foreign investors, imposing an involuntary tax on future generations. Does anyone think that deficit spending is superior to waiting for private initiatives to be funded through voluntary contributions?
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