Reply #16: The OP may have used the wrong term but they are right about the site

[Lochloosa]

Read This:


What is SCHIP?



The State Children's Health Insurance Program, or SCHIP, was established by the federal government ten years ago to provide health insurance to children in families at or below 200 percent of the federal poverty line.

The Democratic leadership of Congress has now proposed a massive expansion of SCHIP that would extend federal health insurance coverage to children in families making as much as $82,600 per year, which ultimately would make 71 percent of America's children eligible for federal health insurance assistance, a form of welfare.

The Congressional leadership proposes funding this dramatic expansion with an increase in the tobacco tax. There is a practical problem with this: As the number of smokers dwindles, so will the funding for SCHIP. In fact, as the Heritage Foundation has estimated, to pay for the proposed expansion, Congress needs to encourage 22 million more Americans to take up smoking by 2017.

There is also a philosophical problem with funding SCHIP with tobacco taxes: About half of all smokers earn less than 200 percent of the poverty line. In the best case scenario, lower income people would be paying for services for themselves (though inefficiently, as federal and state government tax-collecting and administrative costs would be deducted). In many cases, however, they'd be paying for health care services for families wealthier than their own.

The National Center for Public Policy Research intends for this website to serve as a convenient gateway to resources by conservative think-tanks, scholars and commentators about SCHIP. While the National Center for Public Policy Research cannot and does not endorse the content of external pages linked to on this site, it does encourage visitors here to take advantage of the wide variety of educational resources made available on the websites of the think-tanks to which we link.