SCHIP Program: Taxes, Deficits Increase

The Wall Street Journal has an editorial today on the SCHIP health-care bill, which would expand health care coverage for children, and even some childless adults, in households making up to $82,600 per year. The phony accounting by the bill’s sponsors makes it sound like it can be funded with an increase in federal cigarette taxes, but in fact, those increased taxes won’t be sufficient to pay for the program’s increased costs.

(If you can’t access the editorial, a few of its highlights are summarized here).

The bill has passed by a veto-proof margin in the Senate, but passed by a smaller majority in the House.

The bill’s perverse incentives and the strange bedfellows behind it are described by the Cato Institute.

The National Center for Policy Analysis describes the SCHIP program’s odd evolution and regressive and counterproductive effects here.

Its likely negative effects on employment in the cigar industry are described here and here.