The article can be found in all its splendor at the Casper Star Tribune and I don’t think it’s written to make Republicans look bad. Just kidding! I really do think it’s written to make Republicans look like prudes who desire for all poor children to lose their health coverage. Then again, what’s new?

CHEYENNE — Because of a struggle in Congress over funding for children’s health insurance programs, Wyoming officials have put on hold a planned expansion of the state’s Kid Care insurance program that was to include 3,700 poor, working parents.

The Legislature in the 2006 budget session authorized expansion of the program, but the federal government has taken no action on the state’s request for a waiver so it can begin, Gov. Dave Freudenthal said this week.

In a letter to U.S. Sen. Mike Enzi, R-Wyo., the Democratic governor noted the lack of action on the waiver and expressed his worry over financing for the program and the possibility it won’t be renewed this year.

Question: Who’s paying for the waiver? Federal tax payers or the state of WY? News flash: The program has not even been implemented yet and children are going to lose coverage? How is this possible?

The Bush administration apparently does not want socialized medicine to spread to working adults. I, personally, would rather see some sort of program available at a price to working adults, than for lazy sluggards to be covered at the expense of hard working Americans. Just my opinion.

President Bush has threatened to veto the Senate’s bill to pay for renewal and expansion of the State Child Health Insurance Program with a higher excise tax on cigarettes.

If the bill doesn’t become law, the 5,700 children enrolled in Wyoming could lose their coverage beginning as early as Oct. 1, Freudenthal said.

“It’s an incredibly serious problem,” the governor said.

Well, then I would suggest that the coverage for the children not be tied to the coverage for their parents. Seems simple enough. Honestly, I know several people who have health insurance available through their jobs, but refuse to participate because the cost is a few hundred dollars per month. Once again, this is a choice the individuals are making and my tax dollars should not go to provide them free medical care. As a side note, I also know of successful businesses ran by Democrats that don’t even offer health insurance to their employees because they are such hypocrites. Anyway, back to the story:

Freudenthal said the $5 billion a year would not maintain the program with the current enrollment. But he did not specify what the dollar figure should be.

Enzi, meanwhile, said Thursday through his press secretary, Coy Knobel, that expanding the program to cover adults is becoming a problem.

Socialized medicine is becoming a problem and needs to be done away with. Part of the problem is that the medical professionals appear to want their cake and eat it too. They want their exuberant tests and diagnostics paid for by Medicaid, yet if everyone had the government coverage that they dream of, they could in no way charge the prices they do.

Senator Barrasso and Representative Cubin’s offices weigh in:

“The concern here is the overall price tag,” Barrasso said. “One of the proposals I saw extends it to families making $80,000 a year.”

Wyoming did it right, he said, by making the program available to families with incomes less than the federal poverty level — about $40,000 a year for a family of four.

“We have to be fiscally responsible. We want to help the kids, but it’s not a program designed to help everybody,” Barrasso said.

U.S. Rep. Barbara Cubin, R-Wyo., is a member of the House Energy and Commerce Health Subcommittee which has been engaged with the children’s health care program for several months. Cubin supported SCHIP when it as created in 1997 for children who did not qualify for Medicaid yet whose families could not afford health care on their own, and she continues to support it, said her press secretary, Alison McGuire.

“Unfortunately, Washington Democrats are taking a successful program like SCHIP, turning it on its head, and using it as a vehicle to create a massive new entitlement program for upper- and middle-income Americans,” McGuire said. “Democrats have proposed a $50 billion program expansion that would make SCHIP available to people as old as 25 and even to illegal immigrants. To fund their plan, Democrats have proposed massive tax hikes and cuts to important Medicare Advantage programs.”

*sigh* I think the paragraph above pretty much summarizes the entire problem in two words: Washington Democrats.