Any time Congress creates a health care entitlement, it “crowds out” (i.e., displaces) private coverage, replacing private sector spending with increased taxpayer spending. The end result: Private spending and coverage contract while government entitlements, dependency, and spending grow. Since the enactment of the Medicare Modernization Act of 2003, many conservatives in Congress and elsewhere have been impressed with Medicare Part D’s performance in delivering high-quality drug coverage through intense private competition. Private sector drug delivery is indeed a positive feature of the 2003 law. Nonetheless, the Bush Administration and the …
Last night the Senate voted on a number of motions to instruct that are supposed to help guide Senate conferees in their negotiations with the House over FY 2010 Budget Reconciliation. Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC) sponsored one motion which read in part: The Senator from South Carolina, Mr. DeMint, moves that the managers on the part of the Senate … be instructed to insist that the conference report on the concurrent resolution … shall not decrease the number of Americans enrolled in private health insurance, while increasing the number of …
State Children’s Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) is the federal-state welfare program to provide health insurance for poor children. The House recently passed a major expansion of SCHIP, which is now under consideration in the Senate. Most of the controversy surrounding this expansion has been related to eligibility. Nobody opposes health care for poor children, but the House has removed two critical requirements. First, they removed the requirement to be poor. Second, they removed the requirement to be a child. That’s right – the bill allows states to raise the income …
