State Children's Health Insurance Programs

State children's health insurance programs have been around under a federal mandate for some 10 years. The mandate needs to be re-visited and that has been going on in earnest in Washington, D.C. since the beginning of this year.

These programs were originally intended to help the states provide health insurance to needy children whose parents weren't poor enough to qualify for Medicaid. As is too often the case when federal money is available, some states have been very creative with these "children's" programs. One lament over these programs was the fact that so many children remained uncovered. These states have decided that they'd be able to attract more children if they could permit people with incomes of two to three times the poverty level to enroll their children.

There were, according to the powers that be, still too many uncovered children. So, it was decided that the parents needed to be brought into the "children's" program since they would enroll for the coverage...and would enroll their children for coverage, too. The SCHIP costs grew accordingly.

During the ongoing debate over future funding of these programs, several states have been complaining that they're out of money and need stopgap funding in order to avoid disrupting these programs.

Among these states are Arizona, Michigan, Minnesota and Wisconsin. These four states cover more adults than children! According to a Wall Street Journal editorial on April 24th, Minnesota spent 92% of its grant insuring adults. Arizona spent two-thirds of its grant the same way.

We are witnessing the incremental creation of government-run health care without the pain and suffering of voting on the issues. These deals were concocted in the halls of Congress and no one appears to have understood the concept of unintended consequences. Or...they did understand and knowingly circumvented the will of the people to achieve what they weren't able to otherwise accomplish with HillaryCare.