Jon Kyl, August 6, 2007

Republicans are committed to ensuring quality health care is available to America’s most vulnerable: uninsured children in low-income households.

For this reason, in 1997 a Republican-led Congress created the State Children’s Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) to help states provide health coverage to low income working families. The program has shown great signs of success, enrolling nearly 6.6 million children and lowering the uninsured rate by nearly 25 percent.

Republicans intend to build on that record of success this year, and support efforts to reauthorize and improve SCHIP. Unfortunately, during recent consideration of legislation to renew SCHIP, Senate Democrats decided to massively expand the program’s coverage to groups well beyond its original intent: to adults and families who already have private health insurance coverage. This expansion would increase dependency on the federal government for health care and represent a significant step toward a government-run health system.

I did not support this expansion -- SCHIP was always intended for low-income families, not for higher income families; and as one Senator said, (referring to the new adult coverage), there is no "A" in SCHIP. As a result, I joined with some others to introduce an alternative that refocused SCHIP on low-income children, not adults, and ensured that federal funds were directed appropriately.

The Republican alternative would have added 1.3 million new children to SCHIP; provided $14 billion in new SCHIP funding (on top of the $25 billion already allocated over the next five years); and offset the costs without new tax increases or budget gimmicks. It also would have included funds for SCHIP coverage from 2013 to 2017. Because the Democratic proposal uses a budget gimmick to reduce SCHIP spending over that time period, the Republican alternative included more money for SCHIP over ten years ($85.1 billion, as compared to the Democratic proposal of $81.7 billion). The Republican proposal also would have promoted market-based health reforms such as Small Business Health Plans (SBHPs) and Health Savings Accounts; and required a Treasury Department study on ways to make the tax treatment of health care more equitable.

I also introduced another amendment which would have reduced the effect of "crowd out" -- a term used to describe the effect of moving individuals off their existing insurance coverage and onto the government subsidized health care program. The non-partisan Congressional Budget Office estimates that under the Democrats’ bill, over two million Americans will go off private coverage. In other words, for every two individuals who enroll in SCHIP or Medicaid, one individual comes off private coverage. My amendment was not adopted; so taxpayers will have to pay billions of dollars to cover people already insured.

Nor were we able to garner the necessary support in the Senate to adopt the Republican alternative, so the Democratic expansion of the program was approved. The president has issued a veto threat on the bill. If he does, I am hopeful that Congress will be able to return to the issue and negotiate a fiscally responsible SCHIP reauthorization that preserves coverage for millions of low-income children, is fully offset without budget gimmicks or tax increases, and promotes market-driven health reforms.

Senator Jon Kyl, a Republican, represents Arizona in the U.S. Senate. He serves on the Senate Judiciary Committee, the Finance Committee, and the Energy and Natural Resources Committee.