Editorial: Caring for children

Wednesday, July 11, 2007 | 7:03 a.m.

Providing health insurance to children became a little easier 10 years ago when Congress and President Bill Clinton worked together to ease a common problem.

Many families, even though they were earning too much money to be eligible for Medicaid, could not afford private health insurance. With bipartisan support, the State Childrens Health Insurance Program, or SCHIP, was created.

Under the program, states matched federal dollars to buy health insurance for children whose parents faced the income dilemma. Here, the program became known as Nevada Checkup. It allowed families whose incomes were up to 200 percent above the poverty level to buy subsidized health insurance for their children.

Nearly 40,000 more Nevada children became insured under the program from 1997 through 2006, according to government records.

Now the program is up for renewal. For months congressional Democrats have been studying ways to expand it. One proposal would have taken the program from $5 billion a year in federal spending to $15 billion a year. With that amount of extra money, eligibility could be extended to children from households earning 300 percent or even 400 percent higher than the poverty level.

But an expansion of that amount is facing resistance, resulting in negotiations in the Senate to reach a compromise.

The Bush administration and many congressional Republicans have been arguing that a major expansion of the program would be the first step toward government-funded health insurance for everyone, putting private health insurers out of business.

Aside from the nonsense that this plan would cripple insurers, do the Republicans really want to deny health care to children? Under the Democrats proposal, the expansion would be paid through a steep increase in the federal tax on tobacco products.

Although we support the expansion of SCHIP healthier children will grow into healthier adults, alleviating the health care crisis we have concerns about that funding source.

Sales of tobacco products are declining every year, which is good, but not promising for programs dependent on their tax revenue. Eligibility and benefits under Nevadas Millennium Scholarship, dependent on the 1990s tobacco settlement, have had to be tightened as tobacco sales diminished.

So the plan to increase tobacco taxes could prove to be unstable.

The Democrats are being responsible by matching their plan to expand a program with an identifiable way to cover the cost. But we believe that if hundreds of billions for President Bushs widely criticized war in Iraq can be found with little trouble, tens of billions for expanding a worthy domestic program can be found without incurring so much risk.