Government insurance expansion wastes taxpayer dollars
January 9th, 2009 | by Brian Schwartz |The Denver Post published my letter on Thursday:
New insurance law wastes taxpayer dollars
Re: “The governor’s first two years; Two views of his energy level,” Jan. 4 Denver & The West story.
The Post reports that Gov. Bill Ritter “signed a law that … could result in as many as 50,000 more children being enrolled in state health- care programs.” Actually, most of the newly enrolled children already have insurance, and the program fosters government dependency.
The new law wastes tax dollars. Its net effect is to insure four kids for the price of insuring 10. How’s that? More than half of newly eligible children already have private health insurance, according to the Congressional Budget Office. The National Bureau of Economic Research estimates that “for every 100 children who are enrolled in public insurance, 60 children lose private insurance.”
Worse yet, programs like SCHIP discourage parents from advancing their careers and earning higher wages because they might forfeit their government benefits. Parents are thus caught in a “low-wage trap.”
Ritter shouldn’t force taxpayers to fund such a program while truly worthwhile charities could do better with voluntary donations.
tags: crowd out, SB 08-160, SCHIP
