The Medical Freedom Channel

The battle over the “chip” continues – not the V-chip of parental TV control, or the imbedded hardware of national ID threat … but the S-CHIP of children’s healthcare. In each case the main excuse is that it’s “for the children,” but there the similarities disappear.

SCHIP (the State Children’s Health Insurance Program) has been operating for many years now, with the stated intention of providing a “safety net” to ensure that “children” will receive necessary health and wellness care, regardless of their parents’ impoverished financial condition. This was clearly a laudable goal, and for the most part it was the primary justification for maintaining such a program.

Given the fact that children are not born into the families of their own choosing (except under certain spiritual tenets), and are not granted any sort of autonomy and choice by our society (such as declaring their own emancipation), it only seems right that at least some guarantees might be in order, so that the particular circumstances of their upbringing do not hamper their physical well-being and growth into functioning adults. (While libertarians will be quick to point to private and voluntary means for providing this support, it must be admitted that of all the things government does do, this might be among the least heinous uses of present-day taxpayer dollars.)

But this year SCHIP has come up for renewal, and those on both sides of the political aisle are parrying to make the program broader and more inclusive. The Democrats, who control the House, seek to raise the bar on family eligibility, to 400 percent of the poverty-level, in order to cover more of their “middle class” voting base. The Republicans in Congress, meanwhile, seek mainly to expand funding to cover increased costs already present in the program, but they are also wanting to bump up the eligibility, to 300 percent of that poverty-mark. (The current rendition of SCHIP “only” covers those families with children making less TWICE that poverty-level.) In addition, in both bill-versions, the proponents have slipped in the usual variety of unrelated “piggyback riders,” adding megacosts and additional (and often totally unrelated) provisions and programs to the mix.

The few pundits and pols claiming fiscal responsibility as their motto consider this just another “slippery slope” to nationalized healthcare coverage, and they’re hoping to squelch it; even President Bush has threatened a veto if either of the proposed boosts is passed as currently configured.

But what’s really at stake here? Is this about helping kids, or just the usual shuffling of both personal (parental) responsibility and taxpayer dollars, further away from private hands and into the public trough, to give more largesse to more would-be voters, at the expense of us all? On a larger note, is there a place in a somewhat-free society (even one as hamstrung and shackled by state-capitalist restrictions as America’s now is), for a meaningful public-driven effort to give every child equal access to necessary healthcare, so that each has at least some chance to grow up with a fair chance to become a healthy adult?

Could this not be considered a valid function, even for such a society, one which promised far more positive results than the relative costs of providing for such a baseline safety-net? Do we not all benefit from helping to produce strong, healthy citizens in our communities, so that they can become productive and self-sufficient adults when they do grow up? (And again, the method of paying for this is a separate issue from whether or not it is a good idea to do so somehow, at least for the bounds of this discussion. A free society that fails to make some concession for such joint-efforts will not remain free for very long, human nature being what it is!)

On the other hand, has any such effort to help the truly needy become merely a cover for those pushing for socialized medicine as a “right,” to be provided for by “just a small increase” in the amounts at which we are already being taxed nearly to death? Does any attempt to “guarantee” some minimal level of wellness and preventative care, for those unable (or not allowed) to make their own decisions about such, amount to nothing more or less than the harbinger of nationalized (and thus necessarily quota-based and selective) health insurance for all?

We have to admit it, we’re a bit conflicted on this one. While battling and exposing the steady creep (or is it gallop?) of so-called “universal healthcare” (usually meaning “insurance coverage” rather than “affordable access”?) is one of the missions of this blog/channel, it’s hard to deny that “children” do have a special place in society:

Without them, the society does not survive into the future (cf., the Shakers, who’ve taken group celibacy to a rather bizarre extreme); if they are suffering and unwell, their very individual survival is threatened. Providing some kind of “safety net” beneath them, so they are not denied care when they are ill or ailing, would seem to be worthwhile as a general policy (although once again, funding would be more properly garnered through voluntary, charitable and community means).

But when that safety net begins to “cover” those who are not so materially challenged (raising the bar, as both parties of Congressionales seem to want, to include families with incomes well exceeding anyone’s idea of “poverty level”) – and when “child” has been expanded to mean (as it does in sevcral states already) up to as old as age 26 or 30 – it seems pretty clear that this “slippery slope” we’re being warned about is no mere fantasy on the part of the tinfoil-hat set.

If the true intent is to make sure “no child left behind” is extended to every possible “child” by anyone’s definition of the term(s), the result will be just as tragic and wasteful as the similar program in the name of “education” – the one that about the half the states are already trying to extricate themselves from.

If, on the other hand, the sole purpose is to keep the most unfortunately born from falling through the cracks (or becoming emergency-room-only, intensive-care fodder, when the worst calamity takes place, due to the neglect of what were once minor and curable ailments), there is much to applaud in that mission. (Those in this camp might even consider the latest Charles Murray prescription: Give everyone $10,000 a year, to spend as that person chooses, with taxes only coming out after one has earned an additional $25,000 per annum.)

Which is it? We hesitate to say, but it is pretty clear that the latter pathway is not the one being chosen, by either “major” political party, or by all but a handful of their adherents.