The New York Times has torn down its wall and we can all benefit from David Brooks’ commentary on SCHIP and government in general.


[The SCHIP] expansion plan in Congress has all sorts of corruptions and dishonesties built in. First, it perpetuates a smoke screen of obfuscation between who pays and who chooses. States have an incentive to ramp up benefits because they know that most of the cost will be borne by taxpayers somewhere else. Second, it entices children out of private and into public insurance, even though after 2012 it cannot cover the cost.

Third, it creates a fund-raising mechanism cowardly in the extreme. Politicians in Washington like to talk in the abstract about shared sacrifice. They could go to the American people and say: We need to insure more children and to do that we?re going to raise broad-based taxes slightly.


And insurers are happy to avoid competition across state lines, which is the real way to make health insurance affordable. That is, if the uninsured are really that big a problem in the first place.