According to Medical News Today, in July, Peachcare rescinded the enrollment freeze enacted last March. They plan to limit the enrollment to 295,000 and reassess their financial situation on September 30th of this year. If congress fails to renew SCHIP the program will be suspended.
What is Peachcare?
Peachcare is a health care program available to uninsured children living in GA. Children who's parents make too much money to make them eligible for Medicaid, but nonetheless are financially unable to afford insurance may qualify. Peachcare participants often pay a small premium towards their health care.
Peachcare is important for those families who live on the edge of poverty. Health insurance sometimes means the difference between climbing out of poverty or falling back into it.
What is SCHIP?
Congress approved The State Children's Health Insurance Program in 1997 to expand health coverage for low-income families. It is a state administered program, separate from Medicaid, and funded with a larger percentage of federal funds than Medicaid.
This article, "The Middle-Class Welfare Child Next Door" published in July in The Heritage Foundation Press is an attack on the SCHIP program. The article claims that the SCHIP program far from providing coverage to low-income children is just part of a greater scheme to eventually impose a federally run healthcare program "one middle class child at a time."
Paul Krugman, writing for the New York Times published a response to this article, "A Socialist Plot ." Krugman accused the Heritage Foundation of diverting public sympathy away from the truly needy through the "old welfare queen in her Cadillac strategy." Krugman points out that both education and health care are essential to, "give everyone the same shot." And that free (tax-supported) education is an accepted benefit provided by the Federal government to all American citizens of any class. Furthermore, since we guarantee education to all children why shouldn't we provide health care to all classes?
I found Krugman's article to be an interesting response. We provide schools for all classes of children, why not provide health care? Is health care considered less important that education? Or does the majority of the U.S. believe we should be providing education either?
I hope you will read both articles and let me know what you think.
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3 comments:
I'm in strong agreement with Krugman's perspective. I think that it's important to clear up some misperceptions about families from lower socio-economic backgrounds. For instance, unlike the typical stereotype (generalization) that "poor" people are just lazy, most "poor" people work more than one full-time job to make ends meet. The problem is that they are breaking their necks in low-paying, minimum wage jobs. According to Cindia Cameron of the Georgia Minimum Wage Coalition, single moms working full-time jobs make up the largest percentage of the state's population living in poverty. Children born into poverty that fail to qualify for medicaid should not be punished. Every child should have equal access to healthcare just as every child has equal access to education (as Krugman argues) or public safety. FYI: Oprah focused on poverty in several provocative episodes this year; I also saw something on HBO that was interesting.
There is a really good book "Class Matters" by scholar Bell Hooks, which discusses a lot of the misperceptions associate with class. Even as someone who's experienced life in different classes of society it really opened my eyes to how we view the rich and the poor. It also made me realize how taboo the topic of class is in our soiety.
Thanks for posting your reply!
As a mother of two children on Peachcare, we really feel lucky & blessed to have it. We probably fall more into what would be middle class- we have a mortgage, married 12 years, pretty average & normal. But neither of us have health insurance ourselves. Years ago, I cancelled my BCBS insurance. It was going up each year, and my monthly premium was over $500 per month. This also carried a $2000 deductable I had to meet each year before any coverage. This was roughly what our mortgage is. With a wood shop & the housing market in the shape it is, at least we can feel good about our kids being covered. :)
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