by Mike Hall, Jan 4, 2008

Last year, the Bush administration denied health coverage to millions of low-income children by vetoing expansion of the State Children’s Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) twice and issuing new rules to prevent states from expanding the kids’ health insurance program.

Now the Bush administration is going after Medicaid.

The New York Times reports that the Bush administration is telling states that have long been free to set their own Medicaid eligibility rules, they cannot offer Medicaid coverage to families with modest incomes.

To cover more children in low-income families—many of whom would have been eligible for coverage under the vetoed SCHIP bill—officials in Ohio, Oklahoma and Louisiana developed plans to expand Medicaid eligibility. But the Bush administration now is telling those states that expanding Medicaid is not allowed.

Bush administration officials unabashedly admit the reasoning behind the crackdown on Medicaid expansion is to protect the private insurance industry and restrict government-sponsored health care programs. The same flawed logic Bush used in his attack on SCHIP. Quoting Dennis G. Smith, director of the federal Center for Medicaid and State Operations, The New York Times reports:

The same concern, about the substitution of government health care for private insurance, is present under both programs, he said, and states will not be allowed to “sidestep the Aug. 17 policy directive” by expanding Medicaid.

Of course, as children’s and family health care advocates point out, these families do not have private health insurance because they cannot afford the high costs.

Bush Medicaid officials in late December rejected an Ohio plan to provide Medicaid health coverage to 35,000 kids and told Oklahoma officials that their plan to add 42,000 children to Medicaid was not going to fly.

Mike Fogarty, head of the Oklahoma Health Care Authority, says, “We are seeing many more roadblocks,” and J. Ruth Kennedy, deputy director of the Louisiana Medicaid programs, says,

We found that we have much less flexibility to make changes in Medicaid than we thought.

In December, after Bush’s second SCHIP veto, Congress included in an omnibus spending bill enough funds to keep the program running and maintain coverage for the 6 million kids currently enrolled.

There are nearly 9 million uninsured kids in the country, including the 4 million who would have had health care under the vetoed SCHIP bill. Overall, 47 million Americans have no health insurance.

Undoubtedly, Bush’s good friends in the private insurance industry will be rushing into those states and others to offer low-cost, quality health care to all those kids and families denied Medicaid and SCHIP coverage.

Click here to learn more about the health care crisis and the AFL-CIO health care campaign.

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