New Reports Render Bush's SCHIP Reauthorization Veto a Farce

    Two new research reports published by the Urban Institute, a nonprofit, nonpartisan policy research organization, suggest that the reasons behind President Bush’s veto of the State Children’s Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) reauthorization bill are flawed and insubstantial.

    In a recent news conference Bush stated, “Instead of expanding SCHIP beyond its original purpose, we should return it to its original focus, and that is helping poor children, those who are most in need.” Bush proposes adding $5 billion to the program—not enough funding to cover the children currently enrolled in the program and not enough to expand enrollment to cover those already eligible but not yet enrolled. He vetoed the bill that would benefit “those most in need” because, according to him, the reauthorized program would cost too much, would cover children from families that make too much money, and would eventually crowd out private insurance companies and encourage parents with employer-sponsored insurance to use federally funded programs instead.

    SCHIP reauthorization is a real opportunity for the federal government to help states exceed prior enrollment levels of eligible children. In the Urban Institute’s “Eligible but Not Enrolled: How SCHIP Reauthorization Can Help,” Stan Dorn explains that SCHIP may simply need new enrollment methods. One idea is to borrow Medicare’s successful automatic enrollment strategy. This “express lane eligibility” schema limits application requirements to only those families who had no previous enrollment in other means-tested programs. Citizenship documentation or immigrant status requirements can be shown electronically and should borrow from data-matching birth certificate and social security records.

    If implemented, ideas to streamline and expedite SCHIP enrollment will make the program more successful in covering eligible children. Bush proposes to decrease funding in order to maintain the current enrollment pool—but the deficit will instead have an adverse effect on enrollment.
Stephen Zuckerman and Cynthia Perry analyze the financial burden of employer-sponsored insurance  in their Urban Institute brief, “Concerns about Parents Dropping Employer Coverage to Enroll in SCHIP Overlook Issues of Affordability.” Findings show that “the financial burden [on families] of employer coverage for children is greater for low-income families than it is for higher income families and that public coverage for children provides a significant amount of financial relief for families with low incomes.” Their analysis indicates that public insurance protects families against high out-of-pocket costs. This is significant as health care needs become more complex and expensive. The study confirms that children from low-income households are not at an advantage by using employer-sponsored insurance.

    Concerns about consumers dropping their employer-sponsored insurance must be outside the SCHIP debate since employer-sponsored insurance does not benefit families with SCHIP-eligible children. Bush’s veto has no reason to, as he predicts, keep people registered for private or employer-sponsored insurance. The reality is that low- and middle-income working families are already leaving such insurance because of its high expense and inadequacy.

    Both reports attest to Bush’s misuse of low-income children as a wall to stand behind. If low-income children were his real concern, he would have approved a bill that the majority of Congress—and Americans—support, a bill that expands coverage to the already eligible and provides low-income families with real, affordable health care options.

For more information, contact Melissa Cubria at melissacubria@povertylaw.org or  312.368.1168.