Why did Bush veto CHIP?
If you read into the CHIP bill that was vetoed, it wouldn’t take you long to see why… First off, the bill effectively defined a “child” as a person under the age of 25 dependent of a parent. This is outrageous considering that for tax purposes, in most cases 18 is the cutoff and what kind of country would we be with 25 year old children running around. At what point does responsibility come in? Second, the bill identified that families living within 400% of the poverty line would be elegible for CHIP. This means that a family with two children will qualify forCHIP coverage as long as their income does not exceed $88,000 per year. This defeats the purpose of CHIP because it would be provided to people who don’t need it contrary to it’s intended purpose and at the expense of the tax-payer. Effectively, it seems that its sponsors intended this bill to be the precurser to Socialized Healthcare. There was other pork hidden in this bill as well, including items which allowed for easier acc
