Say Anything Blog

...and what’s more, it’s being done at the expense of low-income seniors.

I don’t know how many times this point needs to be drilled home, but I’m going to keep doing it.  The Democrats keep selling their SCHIP expansion as providing health care to “poor” children.  The problem is that SCHIP already provides health care to poor children.  What the Democrats are trying to do is expand that coverage to children who aren’t poor.  As Jay Tea notes:

It turns out that the median family income in 2006 was $58,832 per year. The S-CHIP bill defines “poor children” who would qualify for this as those whose families make as much as $62,000 per year.

This is that “pimping victimhood” thing I wrote about a while back.  We all know that the Democrats want a larger government with more power.  The problem is that advocating for that directly isn’t likely to please a lot of people.  After all, nobody likes the idea of more government control of their lives.  So in order to sell their big-government ideas, the Democrats frame them in terms of helping people who are victims which they do by making the “victims” in question dependent on the government.

And once they’ve got that working they expand the definition of who is a victim to include pretty much everyone, as they’re now trying to do with SCHIP, and soon they’ve got us all on the hook.

Yet what’s funny is that while the Democrats are busy trying to cast themselves as the great saviors of all these “poor” kids from middle-class families, they’re funding the SCHIP expansion by taking funds from a Medicare program for senior citizens.  A reader who would know emails:

Part of it is an additional 83 cents per pack tax on cigarettes. Whether or not that’s OK is another discussion. But that’s not the only thing. Part of the funding for Congressional expansion of programs is a proposed reduction in funding for Medicare Advantage, a program for low income seniors. We should not be offering free health coverage to middle income families while reducing coverage for low income seniors. Shame!

Personally, I’m not sure why it’s the government’s responsibility to provide anyone with health care, but this is certainly a revelation as to the intent of Democrats with this program.