Washington, DC - Ways & Means Ranking Member Dave Camp (R-MI) issued the following statement today after passage of children’s healthcare legislation that is woefully flawed. The legislation is a thinly-veiled attempt to push individuals onto government-run healthcare with a stealth funding mechanism that requires the program to be funded by close to 20 million new smokers:
“SCHIP should remain first and foremost a program to ensure children in families without the means to pay for health insurance have the coverage they need. This bill, however, shifts the focus to cover families making nearly $90,000 a year, before covering the millions of low-income children who are currently eligible for SCHIP but not enrolled. I think that is a mistake. Worse yet, Congress has failed to adequately fund this program-putting thousands of children at risk of losing their coverage in just a few short years."
