by Phyllis Vine

The Bush administration's strategy for pushing through a sweeping change of the States Children's Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) on a sleepy Friday night in August seems to have backfired. While the administration tried to rush these changes, the reactions have been anything but still, and the nation's editorials, citizen blogs and think tanks, right and left, have been responding to the administration's edict.

Of note is today’s column, "Holding Kids Hostage," by Bob Herbert in the New York Times (August 28), in which he applauds the governors of New York and New Jersey for wanting to free children from expensive emergency-room medicine. And free them from the grip of insurance companies. Both states exceed the 250 percent of federal poverty levels and neither enrolls 95 percent of those eligible, as was recently demanded. Roughly 400,000 children are uninsured in New York; it's roughly 223,000 in New Jersey.

Herbert is direct in pointing out why SCHIP frightens some ideologues: It is "yet another important step on the road to universal health care."

And that's what scares the president's supporters as they try to poke holes in renewing a program that has the overwhelming support of the country, politicians of both parties, and state governments.

A weekend op-ed appeared in the Wall Street Journal, written by Mary Katherine Stout, vice-president of policy for the Center for Health Care Policy, in Austin, Texas—a self-styled "free market research institute." Stout writes with conspicuous hostility to SCHIP which she considers an instrument for "socialized medicine." Her denunciation invokes dusty phrases such as "truly needy," along with histrionic images of welfare mothers driving expensive cars. More to the point, another group from the Bush base, the Heritage Foundation, applauds the new regulations and favors maintaining the lobby-heavy "private health care system" (more commonly known as the insurance industry).

Robert Helms, of the American Enterprise Institute, serves a curve by trying to elevate the debate over SCHIP into political theory – big states, big spenders win, he says, small, poor states lose; open-ended entitlements versus block grants begins the slippery slope.

But is this really driven by a concern over spending increases for a program that is currently .002 percent of a $2.7 trillion federal budget? Or is it, as Paul Krugman suggests in his New York Times column (August 27) that, like education, everybody deserves basic health care?

Other local responses:

In Louisiana, 8,000 kids will be cut from LaCHIP. Currently, 12.5 percent of the eligible kids remain unenrolled, for which Louisiana ties for 10th place. The national average is 19.3 percent.

In Arkansas, the Democratic congressional delegation and the governor, Mike Bebe, urge reauthorization for the 88,000 children. Arkansas also uses the money to help small businesses provide health insurance and pregnant women ineligible for Medicaid.

In Connecticut, 15,800 kids are covered for which their families pay $50 a month. Officials say enrolling 95 percent of those who qualify (one of the edict’s requirements) is impossible given many families do not know they qualify.

The current authorization expires on September 30, making this a priority when Congress returns to Washington after Labor Day.