SCHIP Expansion is Wolf in Sheep's Clothing...

How does this continue to happen? How can people continue to have the wool (no pun intended) pulled over their eyes…other than by willful ignorance?

The threat of Presidential veto of the newly proposed SCHIP expansion has again met with the usual press reports. He is denying the poor children their rightful coverage, etc., etc. It is interesting that, even with the Bush-bashing that has gone on for years, the current Congress rates even lower amongst the general population.

This is not about the children! The truth of this matter is simply that this expansion of SCHIP (BadgerCare in Wisconsin) is a ploy to include more adults in the program rather than more children. The additional children we all want in this program can be afforded under the President’s proposed SCHIP increase. But, in order to pervert this well-performing program, those who would see government-run healthcare are using this program as their “Trojan Horse”.

They reason that by adding multiple billions of dollars, more and more states (like Wisconsin that already uses 75% of the current funding to bring adults into the program) can use the increased funding to apply to adults. This happens as the qualifying poverty-level income multiples are increased. This permits people earning far in excess of poverty-level incomes to participate in government-funded health care plans. As this group increases, the private sector health plans lose more and more people…exactly what those who seek a total single payer system desire.

This is back-door socialism. It appears there are enough ignorant Republicans who’ve signed on to support this travesty to at least have gotten this through the Senate. Among those Republicans is Sen. Hatch (R-Utah) who spoke at the Capital Conference hosted by the National Association of Health Underwriters early in 2007. He spoke eloquently as to how this perversion wouldn’t be permitted to happen. He must’ve found some politically-expedient reason for supporting it. This “go along to get along” mentality is a serious threat to us conservatives. And, any number of liberal Democrats and middle-of-the-road Republicans are happy.

As an aside, the tobacco tax increase that has been included as the funding mechanism will succeed in putting cigars out of the reach of mere mortals. With the tax increase going from the capped amount of $0.05 per cigar to a capped amount of $10.00 per cigar, only the “fat cats” will puff cigars. This staggering Federal increase coupled with the hefty cigarette/cigar tax increases added by many states, will effectively kill that industry. Tobacco is a legal product by the way. This reeks of hypocrisy…but why should any of us be surprised at that?

That “industry” is the goose laying all these golden eggs, and it will be killed by the “do-gooders”. We’ll then all awaken to find ourselves taxed to cover the certain budgetary shortfalls thus created by these mandated programs. Back-door socialism will have created government-run health care and we’ll be unable to do anything about it.

This must be headed off in the House of Representatives even with President Bush’s stated position of vetoing the bill in its present form.