Bush, for once, is right!

However reluctant I am to do this, I have to give Bush some credit when it's due. I bust his chops on such a regular basis that it is only proper to back him when he does the correct thing, even when it's for the wrong reasons. Pay attention, this doesn't happen very often.

The latest controversy is about the S-Chip program (State Child Health Insurance Program). The bipartisan bill that came out of the House and passed by the Senate provides for health insurance through the federally funded Medicaid type program for lower income kids whose parents make too much money to be considered destitute. In fact, the cut-off as written in the bill provides for children living at 300% of the poverty line, in other words a family of four can have an adjusted gross income ( NOT gross income) of $61,950 for their kids to qualify for free health care. Bush is right, this is an outrageous use of a welfare program, but Bush is wrong to lie about the numbers and the express purpose of S-Chip. Why lie? The correct numbers are bad enough.

Let's run the tax bill, and since I'm not a tax accountant feel free to correct me. If a family of four has one wage-earner, say a father, earning $100,000 per year in gross income, he can put $15,000 into an employer sponsored 401(k) and other deductions, which leaves $85,000 in taxable income. Subtract the standard deduction for him and his family, according to this calculator, and he pays 15% of the adjusted gross income of $60,700, or $8,323. This guy with two kids and a six figure income pays less than 9% of his income in tax and gets health insurance for his kids. Is this not outrageous? Even if I'm off by 20%, which I'm sure I'm not, it's still outrageous. (In Michigan, the MiChild version of S-Chip relies on self-reported monthly income, which seems like an extremely lax eligibility test for such a generous benefit.)

A guy drags down $100K and a mere 8 Grand fulfills his entire obligation to our nation? This $8,300 supposedly covers his full share and that of his three dependents for necessities like national defense; federal regulatory agencies such as the SEC, FTC, FDA, FAA, etc; highways and aviation maintenance; national parks and monuments; enforcement of borders and interstate commerce; -- and he gets free health insurance for his kids to boot?

Whoa... I don't think so...

Is this even sustainable? I know that the program will supposedly be funded by murky ideas like a cigarette tax, and we all know how this will work. More families and employers will jigger their incomes in order to qualify for this unbelievably generous government benefit. My employer tells me it costs approximately $20,000 to provide health insurance for a family of four so the incentive to eliminate this cost is overwhelming. Less families will choose to have a second wage earners in order to stay under the income limit to qualify for S-Chip. More politicians will pander and demagogue the program to expand it, such as is done with all government programs, such as is exactly what this current expansion proposal is, thus leading to certainly increasing costs. And voila, we have a backdoor national health insurance for almost everyone's kids! Furthermore, less people will smoke, or at least less people will smoke taxable cigarettes as the gray market develops (Did you know a big bag of loose-leaf “roll your own” tobacco is not taxed?), so the projected funding will surely dry up for this ever-increasing, non-discretionary entitlement.

I'm all for nationalized health care; I am one of the few physicians I know who thinks that the time is way overdue to provide comprehensive care for all citizens. My objection to this specific expansion of S-Chip is that it is not comprehensive enough-- because it excludes folks like me-- and, more importantly, it has inadequate funding. I mean, come on, break me off a piece of this "free" health care plan stuff. Between Medicare, Medicaid and now S-Chip, the only schmucks actually paying premiums into the system appears to be dwindling. And let's be honest about how to pay for S-Chip expansion, or any expansion of government health coverage. The only appropriate plan would include a large payroll tax or, even better, a huge consumption tax on meat, fatty food, SUV's, ATV's, cigarettes, alcohol, women's make-up, baby food and formula, plastic surgery, men's hard-on drugs, hair coloring products, boats, leisure air travel, cell-phones, soft drinks, fast food, restaurants, diapers, and other dangerous or unnecessary indulgences to fund such an entitlement. This current plan only covers kids and then it lays none of the burden on the parents who are having these kids which they apparently cannot afford. The S-Chip program mandates no co-pays, no premiums, no limits to the number of kids covered. Do you want ten kids? Fine, we'll pay their health insurance for you! Furthermore, it's providing welfare-type benefits to families who hardly should qualify for welfare. The nanny state gone berserk.

Now I'll start my personal rant. My wife and I don't have kids-- by choice. We both work, and without dependent deductions (I wonder who made that rule), we pay gobs of income tax-- nearly ten times what my fictional father pays-- and we also willingly fork over a full share of property tax that educates all the urchins in the neighborhood and throughout the city. We patiently wait for the school buses every morning on our way to work, to which we go for the privilege of paying 40% of our gross income in tax, and cheerily support fund drives for basketball camps and drama clubs when the kids knock on our door to disturb our dinner hour. We tip the paper boy. We endure the screaming and hollering all summer, we surrender our city parks for boys baseball and girls soccer, and we clean up our yard from their dogs and cats. Tell me, do we really have to pay for their health insurance, too? Even the middle class kids?

Don't get me wrong, I think health care is great, and necessary, and very cost effective. I'm a firm believer in the ounce of prevention is better than a pound of cure maxim. In fact, I've devoted my life and a couple decades of training to this principle. But if you either cannot or will not provide basic sustenance for your progeny, then how about this for a novel idea: use birth control. And if you're a legislator who wants to be big daddy doling out my hard-earned tax dollars, then be truthful as to how much it will cost and who will pay, and how you will push to expand it in the years ahead. Everyone has their breaking point and for families making six figure incomes getting S-Chip bennies, well, for me, that's a bridge too far. I can also tell you anecdotes of folks I know who make oodles of cash, but their kids have children on S-Chip in its current iteration. Grandchildren of millionaires on the dole. Although true, I realize that's just an uncorroborated anecdote, so I'll leave it at that.

In closing, while Bush was right to veto the S-Chip expansion bill, he is still a doofus. A president should lay arguments like these out in a coherent form and engage all the congress critters behind the scenes to tone down such entitlements into a workable form. That's his job. That will defuse the furor that is growing now about this vetoed program. Unfortunately, Bush has spent all his political capital on a criminal war and pay-offs to his industry cronies, and all but his most strident co-conspirators or delusional base have abandoned him.

Bush is the architect of one of the largest and most egregious expansions of entitlements in world history when he designed Medicare Part D boondoggle for big pharma, so he's not one to talk. Furthermore, Bush has flushed down three quarters of a trillion dollars and counting into the Iraq rat hole which has funded his buddies in the oil and war contracting industries, so he's definitely not one to talk. Where have all the real conservatives gone?

I see a tsunami of anti-Bush Democrats demagoging this S-Chip issue into office in 2008, and then we'll have to see what manner of entitlement expansion takes place. And it's entirely Bush's fault. As a presumed conservative, Bush has been responsible for the most massive waste of tax dollars in our history, and that is not what conservatives are elected to do. Not co-incidentally he is now likely ushering in a whole passel of non-compromisers who will eventually get this crappy S-Chip pandering bill either signed by a Democratic president or passed with a veto over-ride. In the grand drama, that's what liberals do-- and they will.

After I rant and spew electrons all over the internets, I realize that a choice has to be made. Do I side with the starry-eyed liberals who want to provide health care for only a select few, or do I side with Bush who has no idea why he vetoed the bill? Given the choices available, I guess I'll have to take the starry-eyed pandering liberals over the criminal idiocy of the murderous and delusional Republicans.

Hi ho. It's off to work I go.