SCHIP - Caring for Others

The saying goes: “Be nice to your children because they will choose your rest home.” I suggest we should pay greater attention to the health care of our children because as a generation, our care will pass to them. Our care for others is not some postulated political equation. With parents caring for children, as with parents caring for parents, there is a deep and abiding moral value found in our consideration and care for others. I believe this is an American value.

When our care for others, particularly low-income children living in the United States without health coverage, is combined with the highly charged realm of political hyperbole we all too often end up focusing on the jargon. Of course, this refers to the State Children’s Health Insurance Program (SCHIP). Possibly, rather than continue its bantered politico jousting, Congress may find that by changing the underlying funding mechanism for the program, SCHIP may continue to serve its original purpose covering the health care costs for low-income children while addressing the vast increase in the number and needs of low-income children. Much to their detriment, low-income children have not learned the socio-philosophical economic restraints to government referenced health care. These children just need medical care.

In its original 1997 form, SCHIP was enacted as a block grant program with a fixed annual funding level. The purpose of SCHIP was to help states pay for health coverage for uninsured children in families whose income is above levels that would allow them to be eligible for the state’s Medicaid programs as of March 31, 1997.

SCHIP has been a success; however, as a block grant program, it fails by design to address the escalating costs and needs of eligible low-income children. Congress did not anticipate the dramatic increase in health care costs and children in need over the last decade. At some point, SCHIP must be considered in the larger answer that our country must find to address our health care systems.

Common sense might suggest that if we responsibly address the health needs of low-income children now, these children may become healthier adults costing our health care systems less. Then they may contribute to our economic system; and, pay the taxes necessary to fund the Bush Administration’s adventure in Iraq and immense increase in our debt to China.