I received the following robocall earlier today:
Hello, this is Catherine. I'm calling from the US Chamber Of Commerce because we need your help.
Some in Congress are trying to dramatically change the SCHIP health care program. Instead of focusing on health care coverage for America's poorest children, they want to expand coverage to families making over $80,000/year, a massive government expansion.
Under this law, more than a million people will move from private insurance to government-run health care.
Just a moment of your time can help stop this. Please contact Congressman Randy Kuhl at 607-776-9142. Urge him to continue his fight to keep SCHIP funding for our poorest children. If you don't speak to a live person, please leave a message.
This message brought to you by the US Chamber Of Commerce.
The US Chamber of Commerce??? Do a search on their site for SCHIP. Maybe you'll be more successful than I was - my search resulted with
Sorry, no results were found for your search: "SCHIP program".
If this issue was so suddenly important to them, why have they not issued some type of statement on their position? They need my help - for what? Oh, I get it - they must provide support to those Republicans who vote time after time in favor of all of the Chamber's other concerns.
Any doubt about that statement? After all, its just more of the same from them:
U.S. Chamber of Commerce is a powerful business lobbying group in the United States. Since its current CEO Thomas J. Donohue came to power in 1997 the Chamber has increasingly supported Republican candidates and is now a driving force supporting the policies of the George W. Bush administration.
But you still may be asking why are they doing this. Other than the above, I can only speculate. Through my research for this diary, I came across this gem from May 27, 2005:
Corporate America declares war on 'Spitzerism'
he U.S. Chamber of Commerce yesterday called on the U.S. Congress and states to curb state attorneys-general, whom it alleges are encroaching on federal jurisdiction and shaking down businesses for multimillion-dollar settlements.
"It is time to rein in activist attorneys-general," said Lisa Rickard, president of the chamber's Institute for Legal Reform.
(snip)
She and other participants in a chamber-sponsored conference in Washington complained that "Spitzerism" has become a dangerous model for ambitious regulators.
Mr. Spitzer, the New York Attorney-General, is likewise no fan of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the largest business group in the country. He recently fired back at his critics, calling chamber president Tom Donohue "a shill for guilty people, [who] has never once found a crime he couldn't justify, as long as it was committed by one of his dues-paying members."
(link is google cached)
Now that Governor Spitzer and a host of other governors are suing the Bush Administration regarding SCHIP, could part of the US Chamber Of Commerce's reasoning for this campaign be a carry over of their strong dislike for Governor Spitzer?
The bureaucratic barriers to coverage the Bush Administration has imposed are not only fundamentally misguided, but also illegal...
...They conflict with the statute authorizing SCHIP. Moreover, they were issued without the opportunity for public comment, as required by federal law. Accordingly, I have joined Democratic and Republican governors from states across the country to bring a lawsuit challenging these new rules in court.
Is a part of this some form of "payback"? I don't know, but at this stage when most everything is politicized, nothing surprises me.
Lets pick apart the Chamber of Commerce message.
Instead of focusing on health care coverage for America's poorest children, they want to expand coverage to families making over $80,000/year, a massive government expansion.
First, it looks to me that the US Chamber of Commerce is perhaps confused about the purpose of the program. They are arguing that this should be a program for America's poorest children. They are trying to get the recipient to forget differences in the level of the meaning of the word "poor". However:
SCHIP gives states an opportunity to build on the poverty-related expansions initiated under Medicaid in the late 1980s, by expanding coverage to children with family incomes too high to qualify for Medicaid, using Medicaid, a separate program, or some combination of the two. Choosing the option of separate programs allows states more flexibility in program design. Recently, states were also given the opportunity to expand SCHIP coverage to parents using waiver authority.
Now, lets take a look at some real data from the recent House and Senate Program:
Approximately 70 percent of children who are projected to benefit from both the Senate and House bills to reauthorize the State Children’s Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) have incomes below 200 percent of the Federal Poverty Level (FPL). An even higher share (between 78 and 85 percent) of the 4 to 5 million uninsured children who stand to gain coverage under the bills have incomes below 200 percent of the FPL. And because both bills include coverage for millions of additional Medicaid-eligible children, a substantial number of the children who are targeted by these bills have incomes below 100 percent of the FPL. Overall, very few of the children targeted under both bills have incomes above 300 percent of the FPL because so few states currently have or are projected to have eligibility thresholds above 300 percent of the FPL(1,2). Moreover, not only is the distribution of new coverage skewed toward lower-income children, the distribution of public funds is even more skewed in that direction because premium payments are required for most families with incomes above 200 percent of the FPL in order to enroll in coverage(3).
(all emphasis are mine)
So what are the current Federal Poverty Levels? Below are the most recent numbers (2006) I could find from the Health and Human Services site: (The numbers do not include Hawaii and Alaska. Their levels are slightly higher.)
Family of 1: $ 9,800; 200% = $19,600; 300% = $29,400
Family of 2: $13,200; 200% = $26,400; 300% = $39,600
Family of 3: $16,600; 200% = $33,200; 300% = $49,800
Family of 4: $20,000; 200% = $40,000; 300% = $60,000
Family of 5: $23,400; 200% = $46,800; 300% = $70,200
Family of 6: $26,800; 200% = $53,600; 300% = $80,400
Family of 7: $30,200; 200% = $60,400; 300% = $90,600
Family of 8: $33,600; 200% = $67,200; 300% = $100,800
For each additional person, add $3,400
And how is the 2007 Program structured in regard to the above levels?
...the bill he vetoed prohibits states from using the program to aid families who make more than three times the federal poverty limit, or about $60,000 a year for a family of four. Most of the aid would go to families earning substantially less.
So when you hear $80,000 or $83,000, keep in mind the above chart and how disingenuous it is every time a republican throws these figures into the conversation without qualifying it with the Federal Poverty Level guidelines.
Under this law, more than a million people will move from private insurance to government-run health care.
Where they come up with this figure is well beyond my imagination. But the other big lie in this statement is that this program is not a government-run health care program. We are talking about private health insurance plans here.
Lets take a look at New York State:
Children lose private insurance for lots of reasons, but most are not because their parents decide to substitute SCHIP for private coverage. In New York state, most lost private insurance involuntarily — because a parent lost or changed jobs, got divorced or remarried, lost benefits at work, or the family moved. Only 7 percent of children joined SCHIP because their parents chose it over other options.
Currently, 6.6 million children are enrolled; the program hopes to add approximately 4-5 million more children. If the families currently enrolled haven't already moved from private insurance to this program, they aren't going to. The US Chamber of Commerce wants us to believe that of the 4-5 million that would be eligible under the 2007 guidelines, approximately 20-25% would be enrolling in the SCHIP program vs. retaining their own private insurance. Doesn't sound like the 7% figure quoted above.
The Chamber is just wrong, wrong, wrong:
Evidence suggests that, without SCHIP, most kids served by the program would otherwise be uninsured. One initial concern about SCHIP was that it would simply substitute for coverage that children already had. These are higher-income families than are normally targeted by public programs. But we consistently find that most SCHIP enrollees are in families that do not have access to affordable employer-sponsored coverage.
Shame on the US Chamber of Commerce, shame on those who are selling the American population these lies, and shame on those who are supporting Bush's veto. I hope that their own children and grandchildren never have to face the situation where they are uninsured and have to forego medical treatment due to lack of financial resources or health insurance. It should not have to be this way for anyone in our country.
(If you have a congressional representative that will vote next week to support Bush's outrageous veto, please take a minute on Monday morning and call them to express your opposition to their position. Please!)