Denver Post misleads readers about government insurance
May 18th, 2010 | by Brian Schwartz |I submitted the following letter in response to the Post‘s article by Jennifer Brown that had the headline New Colorado law to help insure 67,500 more:
Government insurance programs steal customers from private insurers. By not mentioning this, the Post misleads readers about how Colorado’s so-called “Health Care Affordability Act” expands coverage. The legislation expands eligibility for the state-run Child Health Plan Plus to 250 percent of the federal poverty level. But more than half of these children already have private insurance, according to the Congressional Budget Office. The CBO estimates that for every four children who enroll in such government coverage, between one and two drop private coverage. This wastes taxpayers’ dollars.
Worse yet, such government programs ensnare families in a poverty trap. For participating parents, a raise or promotion can worsen the family’s finances by cutting off the government subsidies.
Politicians shouldn’t require taxpayers to fund such inefficient programs, which reduce donations to effective private charities. Unlike government entitlement programs, private charities are accountable to donors, and can assist low-income parents without punishing their ambition.
For the statistics on the number of children with insurance in different income brackets, see , page 12, note 39 in the CBO link above. See also this report from the Heritage Foundation: SCHIP and “Crowd-Out”: How Public Program Expansion Reduces Private Coverage.
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tags: Colorado Child Health Plan Plus, crowd out, media bias, SB 08-160, SCHIP
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