Obama Expands SCHIP Health Entitlement As First Step Toward Nationalized Health Care
Never mind that the country can hardly afford such entitlement expansions in its present economic state and on top of the massive bailouts and “stimulus” spending Obama and his Democrats have or will be adding to our already significant tax burden. It’s for the children.
And you can’t be against anything that’s for the children.
WASHINGTON – President Barack Obama on Wednesday signed a bill extending health coverage to 4 million uninsured children, a move he called a first step toward fulfilling a campaign pledge to provide insurance for all Americans. It was a victory for Obama a day after his nominee to shepherd his broad health care agenda stepped aside amid tax problems.
Obama used an ebullient East Room signing ceremony to continue his push for his plan that would provide universal health insurance, even as he spent much of the previous day admitting he “screwed up” in naming former Sen. Tom Daschle to spearhead the health care overhaul. He wrapped the signing event in another pitch for his separate $819 billion economic plan that now is under consideration in the Senate and faces Republican opposition.
“As I think everybody here will agree, this is only the first step,” Obama said of the bill that reauthorizes the State Children’s Health Insurance Program.
“Because the way I see it, providing coverage to 11 million children through CHIP is a down payment on my commitment to cover every single American,” he said to applause before turning to the economic recovery bill.
Perhaps more ludicrous than the idea that the government can, or should, be providing health care for all of the nation’s children (let alone all of the nation’s adults) is the idea that they’re going to pay for this through taxes on tobacco:
The children’s health bill calls for spending an additional $32.8 billion on SCHIPI, which now enrolls an estimated 7 million children. Lawmakers generated that revenue by raising the federal tobacco tax.
Consider, for a moment, this budgeting paradox. While the federal government, teamed up with state governments around the country, spends billions on efforts to bully Americans into quitting smoking they’re simultaneously hanging the the burden for paying for massive entitlement expansion on tobacco taxes.
Absurd? You betcha. But massive entitlement expansions like this one don’t pass when politicians can’t pitch them as being paid for with other people’s money. SCHIP long ago stopped being government-provided health care for poor children and started being about government-provided health care for all children. It is, as Obama freely admits, the fine edge of socialized medicine. The “foot in the door” Democrats need to nationalize our health care industry. But they can’t sell it as something the average citizen will pay for. They have to sell it as something some narrow and unsympathetic demographic will pay for. Usually, when Democrats try this trick, it’s always “the rich” who are going to foot the bill.
This time around it’s “the smokers.” Because nobody feels sorry for smokers, so why not tax the hell out of them to fund goodies for the rest of us?
That such a tax on tobacco will inevitably be unsustainable , that it’s never, ever going to provide all of the revenue needed to fund this massive boondoggle, that we’ll all eventually be footing the bill for these massive health care entitlements in the same tax-happy way Canadians and Brits and Aussies pay for their respective national health care boondoggles, apparent does not matter.
We’re all going to pay for Obama’s good intentions.
