Health coverage should expand

Congress recently voted to expand SCHIP and make affordable health insurance available to millions more kids while also strengthening Medicare. In response, alarmists have made the outrageous claim that expanding the State Children's Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) will "crowd out" private insurers. For decades, Medicare and SCHIP have made health care accessible to millions of Americans more efficiently than private insurers ever could. Protecting insurance company profits must take a back seat to the health care needs of real Americans.

Currently, taxpayers overpay private insurance companies providing Medicare Advantage plans an average of 12 percent over the cost of services. This amounts to $54 billion in unnecessary costs over the next five years.

The House version of SCHIP expansion legislation ends these overpayments and shifts government's role in health care from corporate welfare agent to efficient administrator of affordable health insurance programs for the people who need it most: kids, seniors, and people with disabilities.

The real question is why private insurance companies are averse to competing on a level playing field with Medicare and SCHIP? Perhaps this is because private insurance companies have consistently failed to make high quality, affordable insurance available to working families.

Today, more children than ever need the affordable insurance SCHIP provides. The Census Bureau recently reported that for the sixth year in a row the number of uninsured has risen, with the number of children without health insurance growing to 8.3 million. This means that at least 1 in 9 American children will be uninsured if SCHIP is not expanded.

Citizen Action/Illinois applauds the SCHIP expansion and Medicare protection recently passed by the US House of Representatives. These programs work and are a good investment of tax payer dollars.

Katie Coombes

Organizing Director

Citizen Action/Illinois

Chicago