Opposition to SCHIP expansion isn't just for advocates of free markets and limits to government power.

Amber Arellano, a center-left member of the Detroit News editorial board, offers a faint objection to SCHIP expansion in two recent blog entries.

First, she points out that expanding SCHIP to the middle class costs money--money that could more profitably be spent elswhere.

Arellano also notices that expanding the program through increasing the tax on cigarettes hurts the poor more than anything else: "It's wrong to force these working class folks to pay for middle class families' health care."

And in that comment, she stumbles across one significant problem with SCHIP expansion: it further expands welfare to the middle class. (It would be wrong to force middle-class folks to pay for their own welfare, as well.)

There are much better methods--from several different metrics--for dealing with the concern over getting and paying for health care and health insurance.