Ed Whitfield: “if there ever was a bill that should have bipartisan support, it is this SCHIP bill. All of us support health care for…”

“if there ever was a bill that should have bipartisan support, it is this SCHIP bill. All of us support health care for children. But the problem that we have in this process is that this is a bill that really did not receive the full vent of the Congress. And so here we find ourselves on the floor debating a bill that is going to be a dramatic change and expansion of government health care. The original SCHIP program was designed for 250 percent of the poverty level and above. This bill removes that limit so that States can do whatever they want to. Today there are 700,000 adults on the Children's Health Program. This bill is going to greatly expand the number of adults on the program. There even are incentives so that children will leave their parents' health plan and go to the government health plan, and in doing so, since children are generally a healthy group, the private health plan premiums are going to increase in cost. They are also imposing a fee on every private health plan in America, every self-insured health plan in America. In addition to that, they are going to lower the reimbursement for the Medicare Advantage program, which is particularly strong in rural areas, which will hurt the seniors on the Medicare Advantage program. So the bottom line, and philosophically we are not questioning anyone's motives, but there should be a full debate on this. This is dramatically expanding government health care and diminishing private health care.”