Save SCHIP from Obamacare

Keep SCHIP Separate From ObamaCare, by DICK MORRIS

Published on DickMorris.com on December 5, 2014

 

In the Clinton White House, I worked hard to help to craft the State Children's Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) in the aftermath of the crash of Hillary's health care proposals.  The idea, warmly embraced by the president, was that children's health care should not be held hostage in the national debate over medical funding and insurance.

 

Now the left is trying to eliminate the SCHIP program and fold it into ObamaCare.  Such a move would hold the health care of our children hostage to the overall and ultimate fate of ObamaCare.  It is vital that SCHIP continue as a separate program.

      

It has always been a weakness of ObamaCare that it did not deal with the problems of the elderly, the young, or the poor, whose requirements are met, respectively, by Medicare, SCHIP and Medicare.  By trying to bring SCHIP under ObamaCare retroactively, the left is trying to raise the stakes in the debate which may follow a Court decision striking down the ObamaCare federal exchange subsidies.

    

SCHIP provides for medical coverage for children who live in households with incomes less than four times the poverty level (about $75,000).  It has worked well and must be continued.

             

The program provides certain key advantages over ObamaCare which it would lose if it were folded into the overall program.  ObamaCare plans usually have very high deductibles which SCHIP does not.  The limits on choice of doctors or hospitals to approved networks hurts ObamaCare but does not affect SCHIP. 

    

SCHIP is working and don't fix it if it ain't broke.