More Health-Care Politicking
Democrats undercut their own compromises on children's health insurance.

Monday, October 29, 2007

THE LATEST version of the measure expanding the State Children's Health Insurance Program makes significant changes to address the criticisms of President Bush and some Republican lawmakers. The compromise focuses more resources on enrolling the poorest children; further reduces eligibility for childless adults; and strengthens protections to ensure that illegal immigrants do not receive benefits. It caps SCHIP eligibility at three times the federal poverty level, ending the bogus argument about covering children in families earning as much as $83,000 a year. And it seeks to lessen the risk that families will drop private insurance to put their children on SCHIP by making more SCHIP money available to help pay premiums for private insurance. Mr. Bush's assertion that the measure "fails to do what needs to be done to put poor children first" is unconvincing.

Unfortunately, House Democratic leaders chose to muscle the program through the chamber last week in such a way as to fail to win over any wavering Republicans and to annoy enough others that the prospects for a compromise may be worse than ever. "They will have ticked so many people off . . . that I don't know how they can get anyone" to change positions, Rep. Ray LaHood (R-Ill.) said of Democrats -- and he's been trying to help them round up support.

House Democrats argued that they had to bring up the measure Thursday because time was running short. This claim rings hollow, given that Democrats delayed holding their first vote to override the president's veto in order to ratchet up pressure on targeted Republicans. Unveiling a 293-page bill just hours before the vote, ignoring requests to postpone consideration because a number of California legislators were dealing with the wildfires -- none of this seemed geared to getting wavering Republicans on board. Certainly, Republicans treated the minority badly when they were in charge; certainly, they've used delaying tactics in the SCHIP debate; very possibly, their complaints about procedural mistreatment were a convenient excuse for continued opposition. But instead of providing that pretext, Democrats would have done better to spend time educating on-the-fence Republicans about the changes they had made.

If the Democrats' goal is to win approval of a measure that would cover more poor children and not to simply score extra political points by keeping the issue alive, it's hard to see how their tactics made sense. If Mr. Bush and his Republican allies really are committed to getting children the health coverage they need and not just to preventing Democrats from racking up a legislative achievement, it's hard to explain their continuing intransigence.