Medicaid/SCHIP Expansion Would Raise Mainer’s Federal Taxes
First, be sure to check out our new Medicaid/SCHIP report on why SCHIP expansion is bad for Maine.
However, this blog relates to a different issue. Recently, the Tax Foundation released a study examining how states would fare under SCHIP expansion as proposed by Senator Gordon Smith. His proposal would expand SCHIP by $46.5 billion and would pay for it with a 61 cent increase in the federal cigarette tax.
The study finds that Maine would pay $450 million in higher cigarette taxes, but would only receive $343 million in additional SCHIP funding. As a result, $107 million would be sucked out of the Maine economy by the federal government.
Of course, one has to wonder if Senator Snowe was aware of such facts when she co-sponsored similar SCHIP expansion bills?
Frank J. Heller
Posted on Jul 20, 2007
I remember working at the MUSKIE Institute which took over the CHIP enrollment recruiting contract from the U. of Chicago a few years ago. Four of us would get on the phones every evening and dial endless numbers of people on welfare or other social service programs to 'find' those illusive uninsured children. Out of a 100 phone calls, I'd be lucky to even get a callback and possible uninsured child. The problem is two fold: * Many kids are in the middle of divorce or separation proceedings or living with a single parent between jobs. So in a dispute, which parent covers the child. And if the child is with grandma on Medicare, will she cover them? ...this is a fairly significant number of children in legal limbo. * The other problem is the large number of illegal or immigrant families where English is not the primary. They often don't participate in public programs. Invariably they have a serious problem, and show up at an emergency room or 'friendly' outpatient clinic or a school nurse's office. So even if uninsured, or even uninsurable, they are rarely denied service. ...I spent a lot of time probing for unmet health care needs during this stint with Muskie's public policy survey operation. The more you look; the more you find and Muskie was getting paid a lot of money to find every possible uninsured child, eligible or not!