Thousands To Get Kicked Off Medicad, CHIP

Another unintended consequence of Obamacare:

The enrollees who are at greatest risk are pregnant women, children and blind and disabled individuals who were enrolled in Medicaid prior to the effective date of two Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act provisions — the 2014 expansion of coverage to all adults with incomes up to 138% of the federal poverty level, and the establishment of a new formula to define household income under the Modified Adjusted Gross Income (MAGI) standard. (Virgil Dickson, Modern Healthcare)

One of the greatest harms that Obamacare has inflicted is to have increased the fragmentation of access to health insurance. People in the part-time working class will be the worst affected: Churning between Medicaid and Obamacare exchanges, maybe twice a year or more, depending on changes in their incomes.

Read the entire column at NCPA's Health Policy Blog.

California Republicans Hike Taxes To Rope Kids Into Government-Controlled Health Care

President Obama's so-called "stimulus" bill is working just as intended: Even Republican state legislators are voting to hike taxes to increase government control of kids' access to medical services. Read more at StateHouseCall.

SCHIP's Race to the Bottom

The New York Times reports that 13 states have sought to bail out out their public-health bureaucracies by raiding taxpayers in the 37 other states. They have marched to the trough to take advantage of the SCHIP expansion signed by President Obama soon after he took office. (The newspaper didn't quite put it like that.)

SCHIP (State Children's Health Insurance Program), of course, creates a "race to the bottom" of government dependency because a state has to spend its own taxpayers' money to "prime the pump" that fills the trough with federal dollars. One silver lining to the cloud of recession is that most states simply do not have access to enough of their own taxpayers' funds to execute this raid.

We can all be thankful.

SCHIP expansion is popular, because it's "for the kids" and the expansion is primarilly financed by taxes on smokers. What the NY Times neglects to note is that SCHIP crowds out private coverage by at least 56%, which will get even worse as states enrol kids from higher-income households, as I've discussed before.

Furthermore, the Wall Street Journal notes a side effect of Government's unhealthy addiction to tobacco taxes - violent crime as states "go to war" on cigarette smuggling (which would not exist without discriminatory taxation).

We are effectively in an era of neo-prohibition, where governments' demonize smokers' peaceful habit in order to seize their earnings to fund a state take-over of children's access to medical services.

Sebelius' $100 Million SCHIP Marketing Bailout

One of the most pathetic consequences of the federal government's drive to control children's access to medical services is the failure of the State Children's Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) to enrol most of the kids eligible for it. In California, 80% of families eligible for SCHIP reject it for their kids.

The obvious remedy? Bail out SCHIP's sales & marketing operation. 350 self-styled advocacy groups joined U.S. Secretary of Health & Human Services Kathleen Sebelius for a teleconference where she announced her intention to release $40 million of a budgeted $100 million for "outreach".

Release the hounds!

If she really wanted to enrol kids in SCHIP, instead of perverting civic groups through government handouts, she'd offer commissions to insurance brokers to sign up kids.

Obviously, that would be unacceptable - because insurance brokers are businesses, not community activists.

Was ACORN on the teleconference? I have no idea. I think it's time for a stronger spotlight of transparency on groups that accept taxpayers' money to promote government dependency for health care.