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SCHIP and The Slippery Slope

By John Tabin on 9.25.07 @ 11:39AM

I notice a lot of conservative and libertarian arguments against expanding SCHIP start off with the line that it's "a slippery slope to socialized medicine." (That's a direct quote from an email I got today, plugging this item at Heritage.) That's a rather weak argument, unlikely to persuade anyone who doesn't already reflexively prefer market-friendly policies. A better approach is to argue against SCHIP directly, as Michael Cannon does:

Like its much larger sibling, Medicaid, the program forces taxpayers to send their money to Washington so that Congress can send it back to state governments with strings attached. Both programs force taxpayers to subsidize people who don't need help, discourage low-income families from climbing the economic ladder - and make private insurance more expensive for everyone else.

That seems much more likely to resonate beyond the convinced economic right. Besides, is the slippery slope scenario really sound? If SCHIP performs badly, won't it diminish the support for socialized medicine? It might not, but it would be nice if someone would explain the mechanism of this particular slippery slope.

topics:
Medicaid, Law