The Catholic Problem with SCHIP

Deal Hudson

Fr. Roger Landry, diocesan priest from the Boston Archdiocese, has written an important analysis of the SCHIP legislation vetoed by President Bush (State Children's Health Insurance Program).

This is what he writes:

"But the reason why President Bush vetoed the reauthorization bill go beyond concerns about money, taxes and the role of government. The reauthorization bill adds and deletes items that Bush says change and exceed the original SCHIP mandate.

Among other things, the rewritten SCHIP pays for contraceptives to be distributed to teenagers without parental permission or even knowledge. It authorizes the diversion of previously allocated abstinence education funds to condom pushing campaigns. It permits tax dollars to be used for sterilizations according to individual state policies. And worst of all, it promotes and funds abortions." (Emphasis added)

It's remarkable that throughout the debate on this legislation I never heard a word about these items tucked away inside the bill. Sadly, both the Catholic Health Association and Catholic Charities USA endorsed the bill and encourage a Congressional override of the presidential veto.

The pro-abortion Democrats who accuse Catholic legislators who voted against SCHIP of not being pro-life should take a closer look at what they are supporting. 

Comments

[Nick Sheedy]

(Check out the below url)

>>IF YOU DON'T support using federal funds to help middle-class families get health insurance, then you can't call yourself pro-life. Or so says Catholics United, a "non-partisan organization dedicated to promoting the message of justice and the common good found at the heart of the Catholic Social Tradition."

Yesterday the group launched a series of radio ads attacking ten Christian members of Congress who voted against the Democrats' bill to reauthorize--and expand--the State Children's Health Insurance Program (S-CHIP). President Bush vetoed the bill earlier this month and the vote to override his veto will take place this week. Catholics United hopes to pressure these congressmen to reverse their vote by arguing that they have "compromised their pro-life voting records.

"Rather than keep S-chip's cap at 200 percent of poverty ($41,300 for a family of four), the bill would raise it to 300 percent ($61,950) nationally and even higher in New Jersey ($72,285) and New York ($82,300)." In other words, they turned a program assisting truly poor children into a welfare program for the middle class.

President Bush vetoed the bill. He explained his decision to do so this way: "The policies of the government ought to be to help poor children and to focus on poor children, and the policies of the government ought to be to help people find private insurance, not federal coverage." According to the Urban Institute there are 689,000 children who are eligible for S-chip (under the current regulations) but do not currently receive it. Expanding the program to cover middle-class kids does nothing to get these truly poor children covered.<<<

http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/014/232bqyzw.asp

I agree with the democrats that $80,000 is not a lot of money for a family of four, especially in NYC, but this bill is not about health care for the poor. Politicians can't wave Pro-life credentials when it serves to sell us contraception and abortion as a necessary evil to get people making 80 thou health coverage.

You can fool some of the people, some of the time, but not all of the people, all of the time. You can fool pro-lifers very rarely.

This is backfiring on them.

[Bethany Fallon]

Many of your readers may not be aware of how the bill is worded to subvert the protections of the Hyde Amendment.

Your readers may not be aware of this:

To get abortions federally funded, the doctors send the pregnant woman to a psychiatrist who then puts the diagnosis of "situational anxiety" and writes it up as though she is so mentally unbalanced due to anxiety over her pregnancy, it is "life threatening".

Given that Portland Maine just attempted to hand out contraceptives to 11 year olds (I can't thank you enough for helping us. As you know, the school board is backtracking!!!)Catholics have got to be educated about the dangers of this to their families and their children. I do hope you consider a Window.

With gratitude, Bethany Fallon

p.s. Carl Keating from Catholic Answers is also educating Catholics on

[Steve Lavoie]

My wife uses the term "gestapo katholics" to describe disenfranchised Catholic politicians who claim they have respect for life from the moment of conception to natural death but promote killing the unborn, euthanasia by starvation and withholding costly medications from disabled and elderly.

Many good and well intended rank and file citizens serving in the Gestapo were brainwashed to justify murder to build a more perfect world.

Are proabort Katholic politicians any different?

[Melanie Cetrullo]

"It's scandalous that abortion advocates at Catholic Charities, USCCB and the Catholic Medical Association are lobbying to support government funded abortions in the pretense that this insurance coverage benefits the true poor who, on Medicaid, cannot afford teeth, eyeglasses, orthodontia, medications."

Excellent point. The poorest of the poor don't have the health care they need. Also, most of the highly skilled doctors refuse Medicaid patients so they are scraping the bottom of the barrel. The more compassionate thing to do if they care about the poor is to stop giving them lousy health care and add toilet paper onto the list of approval for food stamps program.

Do you know how hard it is to get physicians to order x-rays and blood tests for people who have insurance and pay 300 dollars a month for their portion of health care premium?

[anon]

Nancy Pelosi's faux pax with the "poor family" who own commercial real estate and a half million in personal real estate did not help her fledgling leadership. She's splitting her own base. (Those who now say they would never vote for Hillary are up to 50% across the nation)

Huckabee/Chuck Norris ticket anyone?

[Pete DeCosta]

Deal:

I've taken the liberty of circulating your post through my co-fraternity of over 3500 men across the country that I have met in my 30 plus years of belonging to the Knights of Columbus and working on local and national legislation to protect the unborn.

We are blessed to have Fr. Landry in our diocese (Fall River. He has been a consistent voice for Catholic Church.

Can we convince you to do a Window on the pro-life Catholic opposition to SCHIP? We'd love to see this information get more widely spread on the web.

[Trevor]

It's difficult to tell the difference between Catholic Charities, the Catholic Health Association from the ideology of Joe Stalin.

What's the harm of killing in controlled circumstances if the government is nice enough to give everyone their rations of food and health care?

[Janet Stearns-O'Grady]

This excerpt says it all:

The old version of the S-CHIP had broad-based bipartisan support and the support of the U.S. bishops. The new version has the support of Planned Parenthood — and raised the ire of the bishops’ pro-life expert, Richard Doerflinger.

The old version of the S-CHIP was a very good thing. The veto of the new version of the S-CHIP is a very good thing — and it shows how crucially important it is that we have a pro-life president.

[David Gonzales]

Mary Jane: Here is the original post on free public:

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1907687/posts?page=205

"What the article does not mention is that Halsey Frost has owned his own company "Frostworks",since this marriage announcement in the NY Times in 1992 so he chooses to not give himself insurance. He also employed his wife as "bookkeeper and operations management" prior to her recent 2007 hire at the "medical publishing firm". As her employer, he apparently denied her health insurance as well."

[Mary Jane Murphy]

http://dad29.blogspot.com/2007/10/dems-poor-family-needs-schip.html

Dear Deal,
I just did some research on the "poor" family and found this on dad29 blog:

"You may remember two weeks ago in which the Democrats decided to make their case for spending $35 billion more on the SChip program by having Graeme Frost, a 12 year old boy who was in a car accident with his sister and still requires physical therapy, to give the response to the President’s weekly radio address.

Well, the Democrats and, especially the MSM seemed to have been hoisted on their own petard because [t]he Frost’s [sic] were portrayed as a family living on a $45,000.00 year combined salary - with Dad being a woodworker and mom working for a publishing company. Neither employer, the story went, provided health insurance and if the President didn’t sign the bill, they would no longer be eligible for SChip.

A fawning press story on them lamented how they couldn’t afford private insurance because it would cost $1,200 a month

Turns out Mr. Frost actually owns the woodworking design firm, as well the commercial property in which it operates out of - and where he also rents space. The Frosts live in a 3,000 foot square foot house, on a block where a 2,000 square foot home just sold for $500,000. The Frosts also send both children to a $20,000 a year private school (that’s $40,000 a year for those of you who are math challenged.

Further, Insure Blog did a little investigation and found that good coverage for the Frost’s could be purchased for as little as $450/month.

What gets me though is that the story said that insurance wasn’t available to the Frost’s through their employer. Um, Mr. Frost is his own employer. And it appears that up until last year, Mrs. Frost worked for her husband.

So what's the priority? The house, the private school ($20K? wow!!!) or the health insurance?

And they want OTHER PEOPLE to pick up the tab?"

A 3000 square foot home with a new expensive kitchen and over four hundred thousand dollars in equity?!?!

As a woman who had to give up up our family-owned business (interior design) when my husband died and went back to work to provide insurance for my four children, this family wanting to go on the lam is pretty hard to take.

[Jill Mastrogiocomo]

http://www.cathmed.org/swf/pr_SCHIP_reauthorization_050707.swf

Health care for hard-working self-employed and middle income is slipping through the cracks but Pro-Life Catholics can't support this bill until abortions are not a part of the coverage.

Jill

p.s. Our homeschool group is really promoting your blogs through our networks. Very refreshing insight. Thank you.

[Lena Frost]

Deal,

The September 30th National Catholic Register had a great synopsis on the prolife Catholic uproar against SCHIP.

When a Republican president vetoes a children’s health-care program, the story that plays out in many people’s minds seems straightforward and obvious. It’s a terrible shame. Such a veto is a sign that priorities are askew in Washington.

But in the case of the president’s planned veto of the S-CHIP (the State Children’s Health Insurance Program) the “obvious” storyline is 100% wrong. In fact, this is one of those strange cases where folks at the U.S. Bishops’ Conference might actually applaud a president’s veto of a children’s health-insurance bill.

Both the U.S. bishops and President Bush once supported the S-CHIP — but now have raised significant questions about it. That’s because a new Congress has transformed this welfare reform into a Trojan horse.

The S-CHIP provides needed health care to many children — that’s why it is such a grave scandal that congressional leaders have tried to redirect it. They decided a children’s health bill would be the best place to set a dangerous precedent by taking dollars from U.S. taxpayers’ paychecks and using them to pay for abortions.

The S-CHIP debate is filled with paradoxes, but it isn’t so mysterious after all.

The program was created in 1997, when welfare reform was all the rage. It was only a few years earlier that President Clinton vowed to “end welfare as we know it,” and the Republican Congress gave him a way to do so — preserving the benefits of welfare while slicing off some of the waste.

The concept was simple and significant, both at once.

Instead of spending federal money on the poor from Washington, D.C., where the agencies distributing the money are far away from those who need it, money would be sent in block grants to the states. Not only would this approach be more efficient, it would guarantee that more of the money we contribute in taxes would actually reach needy people. Less would be spent on middlemen and red tape.

When the chairman of the U.S. House Ways & Means Committee, Bill Archer, went into welfare-reform hearings in 1994, he was armed with papal documents citing the principle of subsidiarity. Yes, federal money should be spent on the poor, he said, but it should be paid out at the state level, because those closest to a situation are the best equipped to address it.

Both parties united to pass the legislation, and Clinton signed it.

This was in the days before the phrase “compassionate conservatism” became a campaign slogan for George Bush. Christian professor and publisher Marvin Olasky coined the term to describe just this kind of policy: one that paired our desire for charity with our need for pragmatism regarding our money.

The S-CHIP came from a later Congress, after the first wave of welfare reform, but it shared that principle: Federal money would be distributed by the states. S-CHIP money was to be spent providing health care to children whose parents were above the poverty line and didn’t qualify for Medicaid, yet couldn’t afford health care.

So why is it being vetoed now? Because when the Congress changed hands in 2005, new legislators were put in charge, and they decided to make two significant changes in the S-CHIP program.

First, lawmakers changed the definition of “children.” Republicans had made sure the previous S-CHIP program defined children as anyone “from conception to age 19.” That meant that pre-natal care was available to pregnant woman — for the sake of the children. The new Congress removed that definition.

Second, lawmakers added “pregnancy services” to the bill. Through this program, money withheld from your paycheck for taxes could now end up in the paycheck of an abortionist living in one of 17 states.

The old version of the S-CHIP used language that appeared in the Unborn Victims of Violence Act and the Fetal Pain Act. Together, these pieces of legislation made a compelling case, in federal law, that unborn children had rights, too. The new version of the S-CHIP reverses that gain.

The old version of the S-CHIP honored our nation’s longstanding federal policies against taxpayer-funded abortions. The new version of the S-CHIP makes an end-run around those policies.

The old version of the S-CHIP ensured that as much of our welfare expenditures as possible actually helped serve poor children. The new version ensures that as much of our taxpayer money as currently possible goes to fund abortions.

The old version of the S-CHIP had broad-based bipartisan support and the support of the U.S. bishops. The new version has the support of Planned Parenthood — and raised the ire of the bishops’ pro-life expert, Richard Doerflinger.

The old version of the S-CHIP was a very good thing. The veto of the new version of the S-CHIP is a very good thing — and it shows how crucially important it is that we have a pro-life president.

[Jim Boyde]

Have you seen this from the National Right to Life:

http://www.nrlc.org/Medicare/Index.html

Basic Background:

• Since its inception, the National Right to Life Committee has been committed to protecting the right to life from conception until natural death, which means that we have fought just as strongly against infanticide and euthanasia as against abortion. In particular, we have strongly opposed involuntary denial of life-saving medical treatment through rationing.

• Medicare, the mandatory government program that since the1960's has provided health insurance for older Americans, is in deep trouble. It is paid for largely by payroll and income taxes, through which workers essentially pay for health care costs of retirees. When the baby boom generation retires, the proportion of retirees to workers will rise dramatically, so that there will be less tax money available for each retiree, imperiling the ability of Medicare to continue to provide unrationed health care to senior citizens. The economic reality is that in order to provide Medicare coverage for the baby boom generation as it retires, without unrealistic massive future tax increases, government payments per beneficiary will not be able to keep up with medical inflation. If the funds available for health care for senior citizens from all sources are so limited, the only possible result will be rationing. Since senior citizens are required to participate in Medicare, this would amount to government-imposed involuntary euthanasia.

• Under the Medicare as it now exists, there is an escape valve–an alternative to rationing that does not either break the budget or require new taxes. That alternative – the private fee-for-service option – permits those eligible for Medicare voluntarily to supplement government payments for health insurance premiums with their own funds, if they wish, in order to obtain unrationed insurance. Most critically, it provides that government officials cannot impose rationing-causing price controls.

• The private fee-for-service alternative is now under assault in Congress. It is critically important to turn back this assault to protect senior citizens from the treat of government-imposed health care rationing, which is a form of involuntary euthanasia. OLDER AMERICANS MUST REMAIN FREE TO SPEND THEIR OWN MONEY TO SAVE THEIR OWN LIVES !

[David Gonzales]

It's scandalous that abortion advocates at Catholic Charities, USCCB and the Catholic Medical Association are lobbying to support government funded abortions in the pretense that this insurance coverage benefits the true poor who, on Medicaid, cannot afford teeth, eyeglasses, orthodontia, medications.

Did you know that the family Nancy Pelosi recruited to testify as an example of who would benefit by SCHIP has 450,000 dollars in equity in their home. Their children go to private schools where tuition is over 40 thousand dollars a year and had recently remodeled their kitchen with granite countertops and expensive cabinetry?

[David Gonzales]

It's scandalous that abortion advocates at Catholic Charities, USCCB and the Catholic Medical Association are lobbying to support government funded abortions in the pretense that this insurance coverage benefits the true poor who, on Medicaid, cannot afford teeth, eyeglasses, orthodontia, medications.

Did you know that the family Nancy Pelosi recruited to testify as an example of who would benefit by SCHIP has 450,000 dollars in equity in their home. Their children go to private schools where tuition is over 40 thousand dollars a year and had recently remodeled their kitchen with granite countertops and expensive cabinetry?