Blog for Georgia's Children

So PeachCare gets an 18-month buffer of sorts for staying afloat, but to what degree is an unknown for now.  The fear is that the issue will be allowed to fade until full reauthorization of SCHIP is taken up again in Congress, sometime after Jan. 2009.

President Bush signed off on something resembling an early New Year gift to millions of American children Saturday. After months of political posturing and ideological dogma at both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue, the president approved legislation funding the state children's health insurance program, or SCHIP, for another year, through March 2009.

This is the popular and successful federal-state funding system that provides for programs like Georgia's PeachCare and Alabama's AllKids. It is not welfare, but rather an investment in the health of children of the working poor -- those "notch" families who don't qualify for Medicaid but can't afford private health care for their children. (The number of working Americans who can't afford private health care is growing at an alarming pace, but that's another story.)

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In a perfect world, more of our best and brightest would be teaching our children instead of going into law or banking.  The program at Princeton is a positive step, yet quality teaching only goes so far.  There still has to be a high level of parental involvement in order for kids to get an education.

Taking the prestigious Rhodes Scholarships as a model, the Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation in Princeton is creating a fellowship program that it hopes will lure top students into teaching and transform teacher education in the United States.

“Research shows that providing excellent teachers is the single most important way to improve student achievement,” said Arthur E. Levine, president of the foundation, which coordinates a variety of academic fellowship programs. “But the quality of our teaching force today is not as strong as it needs to be, and our teacher preparation programs are too weak. We hope this program will produce significant improvement in both and provide models that the rest of the country will follow.”

Episode No. 4 of "The Midwest Teen Sex Show," a new video podcast, opens with a shot of a young woman holding a crying baby. Nearby, two young boys are noisily scuffling and trading noogies. Looking into the camera, the obviously stressed-out mother of three says nothing, but her expression says: How did I get into this mess?

Seconds later, the episode's title, "Birth Control," flashes on the screen.

That sort of wry, pointed presentation has helped the show lure thousands of viewers since its debut this past summer. Some may have been attracted by the provocative title, but this isn't pornography. Instead, it aims to teach teenagers about sex using risqué sketches, explicit language and anecdotes that draw on the teenage experiences of its two 28-year-old creators -- host Nikol Hasler, the aforementioned woman, and Guy Clark, an aspiring filmmaker.

But this is not the time for partisan politics. For now, both parties should cease the maneuvering and pass a smaller increase for SCHIP, funding that allows current enrollment levels in state plans to continue until a new president and Congress take office in 2009.

Funding for the 10-year-old program, which supplies federal dollars to Georgia's PeachCare for Kids insurance plan, is in jeopardy because President Bush vetoed a bipartisan expansion last month. Negotiations on a revised bill are continuing, but Bush has indicated he will veto any measure that includes a tax increase, which is a virtual certainty under any expansion plan. (For the record, Democrats propose increased taxes on cigarettes.)

Three perspectives, starting with Congress Daily, that weigh in on SCHIP in advance of the Oct. 18 veto override vote in the House. 

Despite Pressure, Targeted Republicans Are Holding Tight To SCHIP Positions

With just one day left before the House votes to override President Bush's veto of a children's healthcare bill, Democrats appear short of the two-thirds majority needed to enact the measure into law.

"I'm hopeful and prayerful that we'll change the minds of some," said House Speaker Pelosi Tuesday. But she said Republican leaders "have made it a party issue -- that they will vote with their party."

Twenty-two House Republicans who have been targeted in their districts by the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee or advocacy groups are sticking by their earlier votes against the $35 billion SCHIP expansion, according to the members, aides, or public statements compiled by CongressDaily. Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, who helped write the bill to add $35 billion to the State Children's Health Insurance Program, was asked whether the votes exist in the House to override the veto.

"We're trying," he said. "Why do you think you're here?"

Republicans are hoping that a failed veto override effort will prompt lawmakers to produce a compromise bill that the president would sign.  An aide for Rep. Jim Saxton, R-N.J., who has been the subject of television ads highlighting his votes against the SCHIP expansion, said he would vote to sustain Bush's veto, but he expects another compromise bill to be introduced soon after the vote.  Another Republican source said GOP moderates are working with Democrats to tinker with some of the eligibility requirements in the SCHIP bill, leaving the $35 billion funding figure intact. Any action on a compromise would have to occur after the override vote.

The DCCC and advocacy groups such as Americans United for Change, the American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees, the Service Employees International Union, Moveon.org, and United Action have spent up to $1.5 million on ad campaigns asking Republicans to change their votes on SCHIP.  They are poised to spend millions more if the veto is sustained.  Rep. Thomas Reynolds, R-N.Y., who also has been targeted in his district for his 'no' votes on SCHIP, said Tuesday he would vote to sustain the veto.

"I want Republicans at the table, and then I want to write a decent bill that will serve poor children first," he said.

Democrats and advocacy groups supporting the SCHIP bill have put out dozens of statements attempting to debunk the "myths" about the bill, but those arguments do not appear to have swayed Republicans. Rep. Tom Feeney, R-Fla., who is on several target lists, said the attention has been a blessing.

"We've had a lot of fun thanking the DCCC and Moveon.org" he said. "Actually, this is playing quite well for us in our district. We're getting more calls thanking us from the anti-tax forces than we are complaining," Feeney added.

"I've been in this business for 13 years. I have had inaccurate, distorted ads run through almost every year, and so I'm not in the least influenced by these ads.  Special interest groups run ads against me and they're just wasting their money," said Rep. Steve Chabot, R-Ohio, who has been subjected to television and radio ads, as well as "robocalls" in his district. "They seem to think that doing radio ads and stuff is going change my idea of bad policy," said Rep. Sam Graves, R-Mo., who also appears on more than one target list.

"I'm on everybody's target list," said Rep. Thelma Drake, R-Va.  "When I explain this bill to even die-hard Democrats in the district, they immediately say, 'I don't support that.' And I say, 'I know you don't. You just don't know what's in it.' "

Illegal immigration is one of the main reasons that House Republicans say they oppose the SCHIP expansion.  The bill would allow states to use applicants' names and Social Security numbers as a way of verifying their citizenship, rather than having them produce citizenship documents as they must do under current law.  Opponents say that change will make it easier for illegal immigrants to apply for and receive benefits. Republicans also say they are opposed to the bill because it would allow adults and children at higher incomes to receive benefits.

Hatch said Tuesday that more than 90 percent of children covered under SCHIP are in families that are under 200 percent of the federal poverty level.  The bill would allow states to cover children up to 300 percent of the poverty level.  Senate Finance Chairman Baucus said Tuesday that a new compromise measure could make only small changes from the SCHIP bill that Bush vetoed Oct. 3.

"The feeling is so strong in the country, as well as the Congress. My sense is Congress will want to send it back [to the White House] in some similar form."    By Fawn Johnson and Andy Leonatti, with Martin Vaughan contributing

The New York Times
October 17, 2007

Children’s Health Bill Dispute Turns to Income Limits
By ROBERT PEAR

WASHINGTON, Oct. 16 — It is the $83,000 question: Could children with that amount of family income qualify for subsidized health insurance under the bipartisan bill passed by Congress and vetoed by President Bush?

When the House votes Thursday on whether to override the veto, Republicans will insist that the answer is yes. They will express outrage that rich children could get coverage from the government while hundreds of thousands of poor children still go uninsured.

Democrats say it is a total distortion for Mr. Bush and his Republican allies to say that the bill allows coverage with family incomes up to $83,000 a year.

Who is right? Each side appears to overstate its case. The bill does not encourage or prohibit coverage of children with family incomes at that level.

Of the 6.6 million children now covered by the program, most come from families with incomes well below $83,000, and the bill would give states financial incentives to sign up low-income children who are eligible but not enrolled.

In general, children with family incomes below the poverty level ($20,650 for a family of four) are eligible for Medicaid. The State Children’s Health Insurance Program is meant for families with too much income to qualify for Medicaid, but not enough to afford private insurance.

Mr. Bush said Monday that the bill would expand eligibility for the program up to $83,000.

But Senator Orrin G. Hatch, Republican of Utah and an architect of the bill, said Tuesday that the president’s argument was specious. “About 92 percent of the kids will be under 200 percent of the poverty level,” Mr. Hatch said at a news conference with supporters of the bill, including the singer Paul Simon.

Another Republican author of the bill, Senator Charles E. Grassley of Iowa, said the White House claims were “flatly incorrect.”

States establish income limits for the child health program. A recent survey by the Congressional Research Service found that 32 states had set limits at twice the poverty level or less, while 17 states had limits from 220 percent to 300 percent of the poverty level. Only one state, New Jersey, has a higher limit. It offers coverage to children with family incomes up to 350 percent of the poverty level, or $72,275 for a family of four.

In New York, which covers children up to 250 percent of the poverty level, the Legislature this year passed a bill that would have raised the limit to 400 percent of the poverty level, or $82,600 for a family of four. The Bush administration rejected the proposal, saying it would have allowed the substitution of public coverage for private insurance.

States that cover middle-income children often charge premiums and co-payments on a sliding scale, so the coverage is not free.

While the bill passed by Congress would not prohibit states from setting the income limit at $82,600, it would set stringent new standards for such coverage.

In general, after Oct. 1, 2010, a state could not receive any federal money to cover children above 300 percent of the poverty level unless a vast majority of its low-income children — those at or below 200 percent of the poverty level — were already covered. To meet this test, a state would have to show that the proportion of its low-income children with insurance was at least equal to the average for the 10 states with the highest rates of coverage of low-income children.

Moreover, if a state was allowed to cover children over 300 percent of the poverty level, the federal payment for those children would, in most cases, be reduced. New Jersey and New York would be exempt from the cuts if they met the bill’s other requirements.

Citing that provision, the White House said Oct. 6 that the bill included a “grandfather clause” allowing higher payment rates for children above 300 percent of the poverty level in New Jersey and New York.

Jocelyn A. Guyer, a researcher at the Health Policy Institute of Georgetown University, said: “This is a wildly contentious political issue, but it’s largely a theoretical question. More than 99 percent of children in the program are below three times the poverty level, and New York is the only state that has expressed any interest in going to four times the poverty level.”

Suzanne Esterman, a spokeswoman for the New Jersey Department of Human Services, said that 3,000 of the 124,000 children in the state program — about 2.4 percent — had family incomes exceeding three times the poverty level.

Some of the current confusion can be traced back to a bill introduced in March by Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York and Representative John D. Dingell of Michigan, both Democrats. They would have explicitly allowed all states to expand eligibility to families making four times the poverty level. But the bill passed by Congress did not go that far.

USA Today
Our view on children’s health program: Bush gives bogus answers to the $83,000 question
Only one state seeks coverage that high, and it can be turned down.

Defending his veto of a plan to expand the State Children's Health Insurance Program (SCHIP), one of President Bush's most effective lines has been that the measure would extend benefits to families earning as much as $83,000 a year.

That makes a program designed for low-income kids sound like another outrageous Washington boondoggle.

But with the House planning to vote Thursday on overriding the president's veto — SCHIP supporters need to pick up about two dozen votes — it's worth pointing out that Bush's claim is misleading at best, simply wrong at worst.

For one thing, New York is the only state that has asked for federal permission to grant SCHIP coverage to some families that make up to four times the national poverty level ($20,650 for a family of four). No other state has SCHIP coverage that high, and nothing in the bill mandates it. So the $83,000 question isn't even relevant for now in the other 49 states.

Moreover, as tough as it is for most Americans to think of a family of four making almost $83,000 as the least bit "needy," most Americans don't live in a place like New York City, which has one of the nation's highest costs of living. That much money in Manhattan is equal to less than $40,000 a year in many other American cities.

Considering the average $12,000-a-year cost of private health insurance for a family of four, it doesn't seem so crazy that New York asked the administration for permission to grant SCHIP coverage to some families in high-cost areas that make up to 400% of poverty, double the typical SCHIP cap.

In any event, the administration exercised its authority in September and turned New York down. So how can the president keep insisting the bill would cover families earning almost $83,000?

White House officials have an elaborate explanation for this, and they have one small point. Drafters of the bill sought to carve out an exception for New York by blocking the administration from turning down New York again on the same grounds it used last month. But the White House acts as if that one provision is a sort of legislative kryptonite that renders it powerless. Nonsense.

Like any administration, this one has broad authority to interpret and administer laws. It could — as conservative Republican backers of the SCHIP bill, such as Iowa Sen. Chuck Grassley and Kansas Sen. Pat Roberts, have repeatedly pointed out — deny any future New York request on the grounds that 400% of poverty is simply not "low income."

The issue would almost certainly wind up in court; New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer is already suing over the earlier denial. But courts typically give executive branch agencies deference in such cases. And besides, since when did this administration shrink from a fight over executive power?

The administration has been more than aggressive about asserting its real or imagined powers in areas such as detainee rights or warrantless wiretaps. It's awfully curious that it now claims to be impotent in the face of a kids' health bill.

The president's charge is a misleading way to demonize a bill that, while not perfect, would increase health coverage for kids who need it, and pay for it with a cigarette-tax increase. The House would do well to look past the president's deceptive rhetoric and override his veto.

This opinion in today's Washington Post makes a rational observation on an issue highly mischaracterized by political leaders.  What a shame more rational voices do not get heard. 

Nearly two decades after the West's victory over communism, one might have thought it possible to discuss reform of the health-care system without invocations of the old saw "socialized medicine." But no.

"At least Mr. Baucus isn't disguising his socialist goal," a Wall Street Journal editorial claimed about the Montana senator's push to expand the State Children's Health Insurance Program. "In sum, SCHIP turns out to be socialized medicine for 'kids,' " wrote Post columnist Robert Novak. Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) said the "SCHIP bill is not a back door to get socialized medicine. They went straight to the front door." Rudy Giuliani argued: "The American way is not single-payer, government-controlled anything. That's a European way of doing something; that's frankly a socialist way of doing something."