Should states be free to use SCHIP money on extending government-provided insurance to adults?

I was on a panel on last week at the Urban Institute opposite my friend, health policy expert Stan Dorn, to discuss reauthorization and expansion of SCHIP. I argued that we need to focus the program on the many children under 200% of poverty who aren’t enrolled, arguing that it would be a disservice to them to give states strong incentives to focus on expanding coverage to kids from higher-income families and crowd out the private coverage they already have. Why would we do that?

While I argued for preserving the focus of the program for poor children, Stan argued on behalf of federalism, saying that states need the flexibility to expand coverage to higher-income populations. I agreed and said they can do that now as long as they use their own money to pay for it.

We had a good debate and actually revealed many places where two people from the right and from the left can agree. Urban Institute President Bob Reischauer did an excellent job of introducing the subject and moderating our discussion. Kaiser has a webcast which you can view at: www.kaisernetwork.org.