State Children’s Health Insurance Program of 1997

State Children’s Health Insurance Program of 1997

The 1997 State Children’s Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) represented the most extensive expansion of the welfare state in decades. The program matches state health insurance funds for families with children. The program is intended to help impoverished families that aren't covered by Medicaid. The 2007, re-authorization bill provided $7 billion to SCHIP for two years, essentially maintaining the program at its previous levels without adding to the rolls. In 2009, a further $33 billion expansion of SCHIP passed, expanding coverage to 4 million children.

Cry Wolf Quotes

It's an expansion. And it's a stealth mechanism to put the tentacles of socialized medicine even deeper into society.

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Rush Limbaugh during a speech given for WPHT-AM Philadelphia.

[The GOP] must decide soon where they stand on the issue of socialized medicine. President Clinton threw down the gauntlet in his State of the Union address, when he proposed guaranteeing health insurance for at least half of the 10 million American children who have none.

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Tony Snow, columnist for The Star-Ledger of Newark, New Jersey.

[I am] confident that Congress will pass the Kennedy-Hatch KidCare bill, a first step toward the single-payer socialized medicine system that the NEA [National Education Association] has endorsed for years.

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From Eagle Forum founder Phyllis Schlafly

The Children's Health Insurance Program has given Democrats a wide-open door for socialized medicine. The door was left open by Republicans, who were in the majority when we passed the original legislation in 1997.

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Rep. Jack Kingston [R-GA], The New York Times.