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Foxx Responds
Washington, DC,
October 11, 2007
The recent editorial on health care for children prompted me to explain my position on this important issue. I support extending the current children’s health care program. I have signed onto HR 3584, the SCHIP Extension Act of 2007 which extends funding
The Jefferson Post
To the Editor: The recent editorial on health care for children prompted me to explain my position on this important issue. I support extending the current children’s health care program. I have signed onto HR 3584, the SCHIP Extension Act of 2007 which extends funding for the State Children’s Health Insurance Program for 18 months in order to give Congress time to work out a reasonable compromise. This issue has been highly politicized for one simple reason politicians who level accusations about not protecting children, even when those accusations are patently false, can earn lots of political points. Frankly, this debate should not be about scoring political points. It should be focused on insuring poor children first. But that is not how SCHIP has always worked. In many states, there are more adults covered by the program than there are kids and the current legislation is chock full of weak provisions that will allow states to continue to use federal funds to insure adults. In fact, SCHIP currently insures more than 700,000 adults across the country, while 530,000 eligible kids remain uninsured. In Minnesota, one of the worst offenders, 87 percent of SCHIP participants are adults. It is plain old false advertising to push a bill on the American people that would expand coverage for adults under the guise of helping children. The bill also waters-down enforcement measures to keep illegal immigrants from taking advantage of the program and leaves law-abiding tax payers on the hook for the bill to insure illegal aliens. Add to that a massive increase in tobacco taxes that will have a detrimental effect on North Carolina’s economy and we have a real boondoggle of a bill. In fact, in order to fund the program the government will need an additional 22 million new smokers to provide adequate revenue. To top it off, in order to conform to the House’s pay-as-you-go rules, new people are added to the program and then dropped after five years. This fiscal shell game is one of the most cynical I have ever seen. For these reasons I cannot support the current legislation. It claims to cover children, but in reality thousands of adults get coverage while many kids remain uninsured. If the program’s original intent of insuring poor children remains unfulfilled, Congress has no business expanding it to cover middle-class adults. Congresswoman Virginia Foxx |