Congress wants to put forth health insurance legislation that will add 50 billion dollars over the next 5 years to reestablish funding for SCHIP, the State Children’s Health Insurance Program. The move is expected to cover at least 6 million of the 9 million kids in the country currently without Affordable health insurance.

But President Bush has threatened to veto the measure. Why? Certainly President Bush cares for Children. But in this the seventh year of his presidency he feels that he wants to approach Healthcare Insurance his own way. He is frustrated with a congress that will not look at his own Heath Insurance Reform proposal. He wants to see change that improves access to affordable health insurance. But the president wants to see more sweeping changes in healthcare. Changes that enable more people to be able to purchase their own low-cost medical insurance. He is opposed to any measure that he sees as giving more people more insurance from the federal government. He feels that this boost in funding for SCHIP is a first step toward a liberal agenda of “socialized medicine” and he will do anything to prevent what he feels is the first step down that slippery slope.

But congress’s proposal is a sound one. This debate is not about helping children. It isn’t even a debate over socialized medicine. This proposed measure is less about either of those two issues than it is about the overall healthcare insurance reform it will accomplish, because of where congress proposes re-appropriating the funding from. Currently under Medicare Advantage Private Health Insurers that provide low cost medical coverage to seniors are paid 12 % more per covered member than it does to cover that person through original Government provided Medicare. Congress proposes gaining the 50 billion for SCHIP by eliminating this overpayment, and diverting those funds to the state coffers for children.

This would do more than provide affordable health insurance for kids. It will level the playing field for private insurers within the Medicare Advantage arena. Proponents of the current system say the additional 12% goes to providing additional benefits not available through traditional Medicare. Congress begs to differ and says that most of the overpayments go to marketing and profits. Eliminating them will force the private insurers to compete fairly with the government single- payer system.

 In this way those who say that the real debate about healthcare reform is one between a Universal Government Run Single payer system and a Consumer Driven Free Market provided by Private insurers will have fair model to judge. Even President Bush, whose plan advocates the market driven model, shouldn’t be afraid of some fair and honest competition.