House Headed Toward 'Socialized Medicine' by John Gizzi

“By the time your story appears, the U.S. House of Representatives may have taken a big step toward socialized medicine!”

So said a breathless Rep. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.) at 5:30 p.m. on August 1.  The congressman was just back from the House floor, where she called me after a day-long battle against what appeared to be inevitable enactment of SCHIP -- that is, the State Children’s Health Insurance Program -- as a permanent entitlement. 

Recalling how the program to provide health care for lower-income children was enacted in 1997 by a Republican-run Congress and run as a bloc grant to the states, Blackburn pointed out that the newly-minted SCHIP that Democrats are trying to shoehorn through the House would “make drastic changes” and make the program “a permanent entitlement costing $159.9 billion over the next ten years.”

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