The President Vetoes S-Chip & Earns Opposition
Wednesday, October 03, 2007SUSIE GHARIB: President Bush set the stage today for a major spending showdown with Congress by vetoing a bill that would bolster health insurance for children. It's the first in what is expected to be a string of vetoes of Democratic spending priorities. The president said the $35 billion plan would create a new entitlement program. Darren Gersh reports.
DARREN GERSH, NIGHTLY BUSINESS REPORT CORRESPONDENT: The president explained he vetoed an expansion of the popular state children's health insurance program -- called S-chip for short because Congress was using it to Federalize health care in the United States. Under the bill, Mr. Bush said families earning up to $83,000 a year would be eligible for S-chip and a third of the children covered would be trading private insurance for government coverage.
GEORGE W. BUSH, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: The policies of the government ought to be to help poor children and to focus on poor children and the policies of the government ought to be to help people find private insurance, not Federal coverage.
GERSH: The veto prompted an unusual display of bipartisan opposition, with Republican senators joining Democrats in urging an override. Ninety two percent of the children who qualify for S-chip come from families earning less than $41,000 a year and Utah Republican Senator Orrin Hatch dismissed the $83,000 figure the president used.
SEN. ORRIN HATCH (R) UTAH: Are families of four getting $83,000 a year going to get benefits under this? Well, not unless the administration agrees to it.
GERSH: While the veto may be difficult to explain politically, health policy analyst Robert Moffit says the policy concerns are real.
ROBERT MOFFIT, DIR., HEALTH POLICY STUDIES, HERITAGE FOUNDATION: It's a classic example of cost-shifting, which characterizes the health care economy, where everybody wants to push the cost on to somebody else and, in this case, private health care -- private coverage, employer-based coverage is going to be pushed off onto the taxpayer.
GERSH: But the cost-shifting would be limited, health care analyst Diane Rowland says, because S-chip would only cover children who have been without health insurance for a year.
DIANE ROWLAND, EXEC. VP, KAISER FAMILY FOUNDATION: I doubt that there are very many families in America who would give up employer-based coverage, leave their children uninsured for up to a year to let them get onto a state-run program.
GERSH: Rowland says the S-chip battle is likely the first salvo in what will become an election-year duel over whether it's more effective to use tax incentives or public programs to expand health care coverage. Darren Gersh, NIGHTLY BUSINESS REPORT, Washington.
