MR. MCCAIN: Mr. President, normally I would be pleased that the Senate is debating the reauthorization of the Children’s Health Insurance Plan, SCHIP.  This is a vital safety net program that Congress created to offer coverage to one of our nation’s most vulnerable populations, low-income children.  That is a program objective that I can stand behind.  Unfortunately, what we have before us is a very partisan attempt to take a good program, expand it beyond far beyond the original scope of CHIP, and to fund it with higher tobacco taxes.

 

Over ten years ago, we saw that there were millions of children who went without health coverage because their parents earned too much money to qualify for Medicaid but not enough so that their families could purchase private health coverage.  I was pleased to join my colleagues in supporting the establishment of CHIP and thanks to this program; low-income children have had a safety net program that can provide health care coverage they would otherwise not have.

 

Today, however, we have a bill before us, S. 275, the Children’s Health Insurance Program Reauthorization Act, which would drastically expand coverage beyond low-income children, making it easier for States to offer CHIP coverage to children in families of four who earn $66,000 a year.  The bill also contains a loophole that would allow a certain State to go ahead with their planned expansion and cover children in families who earn up to $88,000 a year.  With the newly expanded eligibility levels, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) says that the bill will have a severe crowd-out effect, predicting that 2.4 million of the 6.5 million newly enrolled individuals would have had private coverage without the legislation.  I must ask, is the intent of this legislation to provide coverage for low-income children or is it the first step in driving private health insurance to its knees?

 

I am concerned about the crowd out effect but what I find especially alarming about S. 275 is its extreme dependence on revenues generated from increasing tobacco taxes.  I cannot agree with the notion that we have to pay for our children’s health care coverage by taxing and banking on the continual existence of the use of harmful tobacco products.  As a nation we have made great strides in reducing the use of tobacco products and our health care system, in turn, has seen the dramatic decreases in the prevalence of mortality and morbidity associated with tobacco products.  We ought to be continuing our efforts to get people to stop smoking, not hoping that tobacco usage continues at its current level so that we can generate additional tax revenues for CHIP. 

 

We will soon be addressing health care reform in Congress and, as pointed out in a HELP committee roundtable discussion on prevention chaired by Senator Harkin yesterday, preventive measures will be key to improving our health care system.  That obviously should include keeping kids from picking up smoking in the first place and helping today’s tobacco users quit their habit now, which will lead to healthier more productive lives and also help relieve some of the strain borne by our health care system. S. 275 instead asks us to expand coverage to higher income children while hoping that millions of Americans will continue this deadly habit, put their lives at risk, and strain our health care system. 

 

Instead, I supported the Republican alternative, the Kids First Act.  I support SCHIP’s original intention of covering low-income children and that amendment would will target low-income children, even providing additional funding for outreach and enrollment of low-income children that should have been covered in the first place.  The Kids First Act also offers premium assistance so that parents can better afford private health insurance for their children.  In my view, the Republican alternative remains closer to the central mission of SCHIP by focusing on providing low-income children with health insurance coverage if they don’t already have it and protecting the private coverage of children who already have insurance.

 

At this time, I cannot support S. 275, the Children’s Health Insurance Program Reauthorization Act.  I believe this bill differs drastically from the original intention of the SCHIP and I disagree with its use of higher tobacco taxes for funding.  I supported the ideas contained in the alternative bill, which would have kept the CHIP program focused on low-income children and would have done so without dramatic increases in Federal spending or higher taxes on Americans.