Journalism in my Newspaper!

Brendan Nyhan: "If you're not already, you need to read McClatchy's DC news reporting. It's the only place you'll find clear fact-checking like this analysis of the debate over the SCHIP bill that President Bush just vetoed." Indeed:

President Bush claims that the bipartisan bill to expand the State Children's Health Insurance Program "would result in taking a program meant to help poor children and turning it into one that covers children in households with incomes up to $83,000 a year."

That's not true. [...]

The president also claims that the proposal would cause some families to drop private coverage and enroll their children in the cheaper SCHIP program.

That's true.

And so forth. It's fairly staggering that the very same president who's so restrained with his spending that he can't sign SCHIP expansion signed the 2003 Medicare reform bill.

Comments

Unfortunately, this isn't exactly in-depth journalism. I note, for instance, that they don't cover immigration matters, and neither does the "FactCheck" page they link to. The latter organization is on about the same fairly low level as Snopes; see for example this.

A similar problem exists at the current "FactCheck" page as I pointed out at that link. See their note:

The compromise bill that was released a few days after Bush's press conference does rescind an administration effort to block New York state from increasing its eligibility cap to that level.

Posted by TLB | October 3, 2007 2:37 PM

Where are the fetus people in this debate? You know, the ones that wander around DC with fetuses in glass jars calling people baby killers. If they're against killing babies, they must be really pissed at Bush right now, right?

Posted by MikeJ | October 3, 2007 3:32 PM

The fetus people expect fetuses to pull themselves up by their own bootstraps, instead of relying on government handouts, once they've avoided being aborted.

Posted by Bill | October 3, 2007 3:47 PM

Brings to mind the George Carlin line, something like: conservatives care about you until you're born.

Posted by eriks | October 3, 2007 3:51 PM

eriks, I think it's conservatives think life begins at conception and ends at birth.

Posted by Lynn | October 3, 2007 4:28 PM

It's fairly staggering that the very same president who's so restrained with his spending that he can't sign SCHIP expansion signed the 2003 Medicare reform bill.

This is a standard line of attack, but it's not really fair. Bush's main argument against S-CHIP expansion has never been the cost, it's the principle of providing public health coverage to nonpoor children.

Read his veto message -- there's one sentence about cost, the rest is about how the bill "moves healthcare in the wrong direction." He's made it clear he'd veto raising the eligibility threshold even if the cost were zero.

Posted by lemuel pitkin | October 3, 2007 4:33 PM

Bush's main argument against S-CHIP expansion has never been the cost, it's the principle of providing public health coverage to nonpoor children.

"NON" poor children! HOW DARE THEY! I can just see those dastardly "libruls" twirling their mustaches as they untie the children from the raliroad tracks...

Posted by Rihilism | October 3, 2007 5:30 PM

Complementing Lemuel Pitkin's comment, what Bush's expansion of Medicare into Part D and his veto of S-CHIP have in common is a desire to preserve the private sector aspects of the health care and health insurance industries. This might seem counterintuitive at first -- that Bush expanded Medicare in order to protect the private sector -- but follow along.

Pre-Part D, we had stories nearly every week about put-upon senior citizens trudging to Canada or Mexico to buy prescription drugs. There was political pressure building for price controls that would have strangled one of the most productive and dynamic sectors of the health care industry. Medicare Part D relieved this political pressure (at least temporarily).

Posted by Fred | October 3, 2007 5:49 PM

It's fairly staggering that the very same president who's so restrained with his spending that he can't sign SCHIP expansion signed the 2003 Medicare reform bill.

Uh, why? Medicare Part D was a massive taxpayer-funded backhander to Big Pharma and Big Insurance. That's Bush's idea of fiscal discipline: ensuring that the people's money goes to his corporate buddies in a disciplined fashion.

Posted by pseudonymous in nc | October 3, 2007 5:54 PM

Yes, Fred, it does sound counterintuitive.

Posted by Rihilism | October 3, 2007 5:57 PM

Listened to E.J. Dionne school David Brooks on SCHIP on NPR while commuting home. It's quite amusing listening to the Republicans tie themselves into knots trying to rationalize voting against it. Apparently Brooks is for it after he was against it (or some such incoherent babble) though he is mighty concerned about the regressive impact of the cigarette tax. I almost had to pull over I was laughing so loud.

Posted by Rihilism | October 3, 2007 7:22 PM

The CBO estimates that the legislation would attract 5.8 million new enrollees by 2012. Of them, 3.8 million would be uninsured and eligible under current requirements, and 2 million probably would have had private coverage before the expansion.

This statement -- and in general the section about displacement of private sector insured onto SCHIP -- is at best half-true. First, CBO forecast only that 2 million would have eventually obtained private coverage of some sort without SCHIP (not that they would have already had it but dropped it). So the sentence as written ("would have had private coverage before the expansion") is untrue. Second, there's plenty of evidence that CBO's forecast could have been off here; the evidence on this kind of displacement is all over the map.

When you ask people actually on SCHIP, it's extremely rare that anyone says that they left employer-provided insurance to go on the government program.

Posted by mq | October 3, 2007 7:48 PM

George Will, in his NEWSWEEK column, repeats the claim about families earning $83,000. Has he no shame?

Posted by Walt | October 4, 2007 10:19 AM

George Will, in his NEWSWEEK column, repeats the claim about families earning $83,000. Has he no shame?

Posted by Walt | October 4, 2007 10:39 AM