House and Senate pass SCHIP bill, president vetoes

As expected, President Bush vetoed Congress’ bill to reauthorize and expand the State Children’s Health Insurance Program Wednesday, Oct. 3. This is his fourth presidential veto.

The SCHIP bill, a result of a compromise of earlier House and Senate bills, passed both houses of Congress last week. It would have provided $60 billion to the program over the next five years by increasing tobacco taxes from $.39 per pack to $1 per pack and would have added nearly four million uninsured children to the program in addition to the estimated 6 million already enrolled.

Unlike the earlier House version of the SCHIP bill, the compromise bill did not include a Medicare physician payment increase. Kevin Burke, director of the AAFP Division on Government Relations, said in a Sept. 21 AAFP News Now article that we can expect the issue of physician payment to be taken care of later in the year. “We had hoped to get this resolved sooner because physicians need some level of certainty for next year,” Burke said in the article.

The White House and Republican opponents of the SCHIP expansion bill, including Sen. John Cornyn, say resistance stems from a desire to avoid “a big step toward socialized medicine” or “government-run health care.” The president also expresses discontent with the bill’s expense—it overspends his proposal by $35 billion.

Supporters point to the numbers of uninsured and the need for Americans to have access to private affordable health care. To override a presidential veto, both houses must hold a vote and have the override pass by a two-thirds majority. The Senate passed the SCHIP bill with this majority, 67 to 29, but House fell just short of the safety margin, 265 to 159. The House is expected to vote on an override Oct. 18.

The House and Senate passed a stopgap spending bill last week to keep financing all operations of the federal government, including the SCHIP program. This program and others will continue to receive financing through mid-November.