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The House Energy and Commerce Committee followed the Senate Wednesday in passing a bill to rescue the Children's Health Insurance Program, which Republican negligence allowed to expire over the weekend. As predicted, the bill coming to the floor in the House is likely to be too full of poison pills for the Senate, where it's going to have to meet a 60-vote threshold.
One provision of the House Republican bill would require older Americans with income of more than $500,000 a year to pay higher Medicare premiums. […]
The House bill would also make it easier for states to eliminate Medicaid coverage for some low-income people who hit the jackpot in lotteries. Under current Medicaid rules, income received as a lump sum, such as lottery winnings, is counted as income only in the month when it is received. […]
But Democrats said it was outrageous for Republicans to demand such offsets for CHIP while pushing huge tax cuts that could add hundreds of billions of dollars to federal budget deficits.
The Republican CHIP proposals “will likely mean more delay and possibly no action in Congress until the end of the year as part of an omnibus appropriations bill,” said Representative Frank Pallone Jr. of New Jersey, the senior Democrat on the Energy and Commerce Committee.
On their face, the things Republicans have added don't seem that outrageous, but they are unnecessary and just mean. They're going after Medicare and Medicaid, trying to erode the programs, because that's what they do. These are purely political measures, meant to embarrass Democrats for opposing them. Wealthier people already pay higher Medicare premiums and the lottery thing is part of the Republicans' unhealthy obsession with Obamacare and is clearly not an issue so big that it is bankrupting the system.
What is a pressing issue is reauthorizing this expired program. Eleven states will run out of funding by the end of the year. Minnesota has already run out and had to get an emergency infusion of $3.6 million from the federal Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services this week in order to get through the month. States are freaking out, hospitals are freaking out and parents who are starting to receive letters informing them that their children's health coverage might end are freaking out. With two weeks of recess coming up—next week for the Senate and the week after for the House—time is quickly running out.
What House Republicans are doing—as usual—is playing politics with children's health. They know these poison pills will complicate the process, will drag it out in the Senate. They should know that actual living children (as opposed to the fetuses they wasted time voting to "protect" this week) are in jeopardy. Which is just what these assholes want. They love taking children—particularly poor children—hostage.
