Congress and White House need to move on S-CHIP

The ongoing inability of Democrats and Republicans in Congress to reach an agreement with President Bush on how to best provide health coverage for the nation’s uninsured children is having real consequences in Ohio.

Gov. Ted Strickland says Ohio is ready to put together a plan that would guarantee coverage for children in families with income of up to $62,000 for a family of four — that’s three times the federal poverty rate for a family of that size.

Strickland says that given the high cost of health care, that is a reasonable target.

A survey released in September by the Kaiser Family Foundation found that premiums for employer-sponsored health insurance have risen 78 percent over the last six years. During the same period, the percentage of companies offering health insurance dropped from 69 percent to 60 percent, and co-payments increased almost everywhere.

The cost of health care and health care coverage are locked in a vicious cycle. The larger the number of uninsured patients hospitals must treat, the larger the hospitals’ losses. At the same time, a portion of those losses eventually work their way into higher costs for insured patients. And that forces more companies to drop or reduce their insurance coverage.

Providing coverage for uninsured children is not only the right thing to do from a moral standpoint, it makes good sense for the hospitals and for patients (and insurance companies) that pay their hospital bills.

Ohio target

Strickland says that if Congress passes and the president signs an S-CHIP bill, Ohio will be able to provide coverage for an additional 20,000 to 25,000 children. That won’t solve the health care problems in the state — they’re much more complicated than that — but it would provide needed coverage for those thousands of children and peace of mind for their families.

The U.S. Senate passed an S-CHIP bill by a bipartisan and veto-proof margin. The House, however, upheld President Bush’s veto on a largely party-line vote.

S-CHIP (the S stands for State, the CHIP for Children’s Health Insurance Program) has had strong bipartisan support in the past because it was properly seen as devolving power from the federal government to the states. States were encouraged to develop programs that best suited their circumstances.

But in this legislative round, the program got tagged by some as a step toward nationalized or socialized medicine and conservatives in the House and White House decided that blocking S-CHIP was an issue that resonated with their base.

The president’s attempt to paint a program that would cost $35 billion over five years as a budget-buster rang hollow, given that the same week he vetoed S-CHIP he asked Congress for additional funding of the war in Iraq, which is costing as much per week as S-CHIP would cost in a year.

States — such as Ohio — that want to pursue innovative ways of addressing the need to provide health care to children need Congress and the White House to work out their differences. Or they need enough Republicans in the House to join their Senate colleagues in passing a bill that would withstand the president’s veto.