Posted on 01/29/2002 1:10:56 PM PST by GeneD
Filed at 4:59 p.m. ET
WASHINGTON (AP) -- President Bush will ask Congress for new tax credits to help people buy health insurance and more than $3 billion to expand government-run insurance programs, boosting ideas supported by both liberals and conservatives.
The president also plans to ask for more money for community health centers, who care for many uninsured patients and have long been promoted by Bush as an important part of the nation's health-care solution.
With 44 million Americans lacking insurance, the issue is before Congress constantly. Still, lawmakers failed to act last year, and debate over how much the unemployed need to help pay for health insurance has kept a stimulus package stuck on Capitol Hill.
The Bush plan will be detailed in the budget he submits to Congress next week. Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy Thompson is expected to preview it Wednesday.
The first piece of his proposal would recycle $3.2 billion allocated to the Children's Health Insurance Program but not spent by states. The money is scheduled to return to the federal treasury, but Bush is asking Congress to make it available to states that want to expand their CHIP plans and Medicaid to more low-income children or to their parents.
This is the approach to helping the uninsured that Democrats generally prefer. These state-run programs offer families health insurance directly, meaning parents don't have to shop around for coverage and are guaranteed a basic package of benefits.
Conservatives typically prefer a free-market approach, which would have families choose their own health insurance packages in the open market. Bush's plan, first made when he was running for president and included in his budget last year, will offer tax breaks to help pay often-steep premiums.
This year's proposal will be essentially unchanged and worth up to $1,000 per person or $2,000 per couple, according to an administration official speaking on condition of anonymity. Like last year, it will be available to people who don't owe federal taxes -- typically people with very low incomes.
Last year's proposal, which was phased in over a number of years, set the income limit at $30,000 in adjusted gross income for individual tax filers and $60,000 for married couples.
The plan's cost was estimated at $71.5 billion over 10 years.
The president also will propose an increase of $114 million for community health centers, bringing the total to $1.5 billion, an 8 percent increase over this year's appropriation.
Additionally, the budget plan will propose $350 million to continue Medicaid coverage for families that have recently left welfare. Without this extension, most parents would lose health coverage when they left the rolls. Eligibility for some help would continue for many children, but the new coverage might cost these families more than Medicaid did.
``Making Medicaid available during the welfare-to-work period encourages people to become employed by ensuring that their efforts to find jobs won't result in lost health coverage,'' Thompson said last week in announcing this proposal. ``We're continuing to make sure that work pays for our families.''
So multiply that by ten for the real cost.
More milk for the gov't tit suckers and another excuse to grab more of other peoples' money (taxpayers).
W, like his father, can take care of foreign policy and defense. But like his father, he is an unmitigated disaster on the domestic front.
Remember those dummie lights on older cars that used to light up if oil pressure was a problem. Well, the Gore Light is on now. We've got a problem.
I resent that attempt to besmirch our president. Everyone knows this is the cleverest president we've had. He's just spending more money like Gore would have to prove to America how bad it is to spend so much.
< /sarcasm > (Giganticly Big Mega Spending Government Barf Alert!)
Libertarians are actually starting to look good.....
Tax Credits - Government threatens to take your money by force, unless you spend it on something the government likes.
End result: You don't spend your money on what you want, but you think you did.
Yeah... that's what we want to see. Let's not forget the part about wanting to nuke the starving orphan gay whales and throw the old folks out of their rat infested hovels so they can eat cat food out on the street. Who are you? Terry McCaulliff?
Chill dude. There's already a national HHS program in place to insure 100% of the nation's chillun. Medicare takes care of the poor disenfranchised welfare motherssingle moms and the elderly. Who does this leave? A small number of indigents who stay away from the system for reasons of mental illness or lack of need, and young singles who opt not to carry health insurance because they're unlikely to use it. And let's not forget the illegal aliens. This looks like the seeds of HillaryCare for the next dem administration.
Because between losing jobs overseas (no, I don't think all the low wage/low skill workers will be retrained as rocket scientists) and allowing the illegals to come in and stay, there are going to be ALOT of people needing Government assistance.
Basically wards of the state, with no jobs and no benefits. But, hey.. the tradeoff is they can buy cheap imports, if they can ever find employment to begin with, that is.
And you can bet they will be needing social security to retire and not starve to death, so we will have to "save" that somehow.
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