1 in 8 children need CHIP and Republicans don’t give a damn
The kids are not alright and the GOP is to blame
I have three kids. Two of them were once enrolled in Apple Health. Apple Health is Washington state’s Medicaid program subsidized in part by the federal Child Health Insurance Program (CHIP). The Republican Congress is letting CHIP die a long, slow death for a completely avoidable reason: they declined to reauthorize its funding. Through Apple Health, my oldest two children saw a pediatrician for their first infant wellness check-ups, received vaccinations for diseases that killed millions of children in previous generations, and were able to access emergency health care when they got suddenly ill or hurt like kids are prone to do.
We needed Apple Health because my ex-wife and I were in college when we had our first daughter. We continued to rely on it when my first part-time job only offered part-time benefits and was cut after just a year. I ended up working for less pay and less time manning the graveyard shift at a gas station while she ran the front desk at a plumber’s office, pregnant with our son. When I finally caught a break and landed a writing gig at an unscrupulous employer that classified full-time employees as contractors, stole wages, and actually laughed at the notion of benefits — we needed Apple Health even more.
We weren’t alone. Apple Health covers 850,000 children in Washington every year. And because of the way CHIP was authored (with the intent to provide coverage for families who don’t make a whole lot but still make more than qualifying threshold for Medicaid) my family likely directly benefited from CHIP — especially as we began climbing the income ladder. My kids were two of the nearly 50,000 in Washington covered by CHIP money every month. And CHIP made it possible for 9 million — or 1 in 8 — kids in America to actually see a doctor.
Washington won’t run out of CHIP funds for a few more months, but 10 states — including California, the state with the largest population of children in America — already have by the time you read this or will by the year’s end. This is despite CHIP’s success reducing the uninsured rate among children to the lowest-ever 4.8%. In addition to the over 1 in 8 kids soon to be kicked off health insurance, over 370,000 pregnant women a year have received prenatal checkups because of CHIP; they will likely go uninsured. And because poverty falls along racial lines, a majority of the kids whose CHIP-provided health care that will be revoked will be children of color.
The GOP-controlled Congress no longer finds CHIP a worthwhile expense, and there doesn’t seem to be a plan to address it. As a parent, taxpayer, and human being, I don’t even know how to begin to argue with this Republican decision by inaction. It is stupid, cruel, vile, irresponsible, and morally reprehensible governance. It is an unconscionable attack on fundamental American ideals and an American Dream that promises our children that their lives can and will be better than ours.
It’s particularly galling because CHIP works. The proof is entirely non-partisan. There are dozens of reports out there that show that CHIP is a relatively inexpensive way to keep kids from developing chronic, lifelong ailments — to say nothing of the positive impacts good health can have on educational, economic, and social outcomes. Even the very first reports that only measured rates of health care coverage showed that more kids got insurance with CHIP than with Medicaid alone— which would indicate, in aggregate, that this is a resounding public health victory. As if securing health care for 9 million kids at approximately $1,500/child, weren’t proof of that on its own.
Merits aside (because wtf are those?), we’re used to having lift-yourself-up-by-your-golden-bootstraps ideological fights about this sort of thing. So much so that Joe Scarborough — in what must’ve been a reaction to some sort of welfare-queen-bat-signal — mischaracterized Republican Sen. Orrin Hatch’s remarks on the topic in a tweet, which was one of the only reasons CHIP even made the news in the last couple weeks. He pulled the following from an exchange on the Senate floor:
“I have a rough time wanting to spend billions and billions and trillions of dollars to help people who won’t help themselves, won’t lift a finger and expect the federal government to do everything.”
It’s worth restating at this point that my ex-wife and I were working very, very hard while we received help from CHIP and Medicaid (and other federally-subsidized programs that are on this Republican government’s chopping block like SNAP). And our story is unremarkable insofar as millions of families are doing the exact same thing — trying to raise kids while facing a laundry list of generational economic challenges (rising costs of education, low wages, a deteriorating social safety net, etc.).
But those facts aside, the respectability of American individuals should not be a condition upon which they receive help. And those self-righteous and cynical enough to assume that position should have no place in our politics. A parent’s educational level or economic mobility (or some old white guy from Utah’s preconceived idea of what hard work and respectable living looks like) should never be the determinant for ensuring positive health outcomes for a child. But unfortunately for us all, that’s not even the argument we’re having.
“Nobody believes in the CHIP program more than I.”
That’s what Republican Sen. Hatch said earlier in those same statements, and I believe him. He authored the original legislation, and I even think he believes himself when he says, “I believe in helping those who cannot help themselves but would if they could.” But he doesn’t because his actions don’t align with his values.
There is no greater statement of Hatch’s position on helping those in our society “who cannot help themselves” than his continued support of a GOP tax bill that — in an extraordinary transfer of wealth at a moment of extraordinary wealth disparity — sets up a context to eliminate all domestic federal programs that benefit the poor, working- and middle-class of America.
By blowing an unprecedented hole in the national deficit, Republicans have set the stage for a future drama wherein they can propose to dismantle the modern American contract established in the New Deal and Great Society. Right now, Republicans aresaying we can’t pay for the healthcare of our children. So it’s no stretch of the imagination that they’ll say later, we can’t foot the bill for Medicaid or Social Security — to say nothing of securing a retirement and healthcare for those who built this country.
Our tax code is our social contract. Republicans refuse to spend $1,500 per kid to keep them healthy. They will, however, vote to ensure wealthy children will get to keep double their inheritance — up to $10,000,000 — tax-free before entirely repealing the estate tax in 2024.
There are no values being upheld here. There are no conservative principles to be defended. They’re not just starving the beast — the GOP is actively putting American children in harm’s way. As my colleague Paul Constant put it: “Republicans are no longer painting themselves as a part of the government. They are against government, and they are against society.”
Kids will die. Republicans will allow it. And there isn’t much the rest of us can do at the moment to force the GOP into action. If Republicans come around asking to cut a deal to keep the government open, Democrats should trade on permanent fixes for CHIP and DACA (and whatever else they can swindle out of these MENSA rejects). If this clown car derby of unpatriotic, craven Republicans can’t pony up for legislation that they’re on record as having supported, then the failure remains, as it always has been, with the GOP. And I swear to God, if there is still a functioning American democracy for my kids to participate in when they come of age, I’ll do everything within my power to make sure they don’t ever forget these assclowns.
