Nov. 23, 2009 The Jewish Ethicist by Rabbi Dr. Asher Meir: Negotiating nuisances JWisdom.com: Actually, it really is all about you with Rabbi Lawrence Hajioff Nov. 20, 2009 Rabbi David Aaron: How to make every second of your life come first Caroline B. Glick: Whither American Jewry Nov. 19, 2009 Binyamin L. Jolkovsky: Please Listen to this Godcast (5 minutes) Jonathan Tobin: ADL Crosses the Line with Report Bashing Obama Critics Nov. 18, 2009 Rabbi Yonason Goldson: What Judaism has to say about the secret of the Mona Lisa's smile JWisdom.com: The (Jewish) Dating Game with Rabbi Lawrence Hajioff (8 minutes) Nov. 17, 2009 Steven Emerson: How Does the 4th Amendment Impact Terror Finance Investigations? JWisdom.com: If Frank Sinatra married Edith Piaf with Rabbi Y.Y. Rubinstein (2 minutes) Life lessons from what would be regarded as the most inappropriate lyrics ever sung Nov. 16, 2009 The Jewish Ethicist by Rabbi Dr. Asher Meir : When borrowing is stealing JWisdom.com: Deconstructing faith with Rabbi Warren Goldstein (9 minutes) Nov. 13, 2009 JWisdom.com Sarah's subjective reality with Rabbi Sroy Levitansky ( 6 minutes) Caroline B. Glick: Obama's failure, Netanyahu's opportunity Nov. 12, 2009 The Kosher Gourmet By Marialisa Calta : A sweet sweet potato treat JWisdom.com Does God get tired? with Rabbi Harvey Belovski ( 5 minutes) Nov. 11, 2009 Rabbi Avi Shafran: Jews and money: When anti-Semitism isn't JWisdom.com Marriages are not made in Heaven with Rabbi Lawrence Hajioff (VERY fast 15 minutes) Nov. 10, 2009 Michael Doyle: Author of book exposing CAIR ordered to remove supporting documents from Web JWisdom.com If the creation so loudly shouts the existence of the Creator, why aren't more people believers? with Rabbi Naftali Brawer (9 minutes) Nov. 9, 2009 Mark Steyn: Shooter exposes hole in U.S. terror strategy JWisdom.com It's never too late to have a happy childhood with Sarah Chana Radcliffe (5 minutes) Nov. 6, 2009 Rabbi Berel Wein: Choosing to hear JWisdom.com Zero to 1/60th: How to Empower An Hour with Gavriel Aryeh Sande (7 minutes) Caroline B. Glick The mullahs' big week Suzanne Fields A Fallen Wall for Fallen Man Nov. 5, 2009 The Kosher Gourmet: Three scrumptious -- but simple -- butternut squash dishes JWisdom.com Hidden Hints: Unlocking Faith & Prayer with Rabbi Jay Yaacov Schwartz (10 minutes) Nov. 4, 2009 Tom Hamburger and Kim Geiger: Should prayers be covered? JWisdom.com When God played peacemaker With Rabbi Sroy Levitansky (5 minutes) Nov. 3, 2009 Martin Peretz: Beware, Barack. Beware, Rahm. Beware, Axelrod JWisdom.com Are you are closet idolater? With Sara Yoheved Rigler (10 minutes) Nov. 2, 2009 Paul Greenberg: The Holocaust is now on Facebook JWisdom.com Abraham's Strange Change With Rabbi Yitzchok Fingerer (5 minutes) Oct. 29, 2003 Mortimer B. Zuckerman: Graffiti On History's Walls (MUST-READ!)

Jewish World Review Oct. 19, 2007 / 7 Mar-Cheshvan 5768 The children's crusade — for socialized medicine By Rich Lowry http://www.JewishWorldReview.com | Democrats are altogether too modest in the claims they make for the SCHIP children's health-insurance program. They talk only about what it does to cover needy families with uninsured kids, but never about all the wondrous things it can do for middle-class families with their own private insurance. The children's health program is the occasion of the biggest domestic-policy dust-up of Bush's presidency. Bush vetoed the Democratic re-authorization of the bill as too profligate. The House upheld his veto, but not without Democrats gleefully portraying the president as an enemy of children's health. At bottom, the argument is about whether the government will extend public coverage further up the income scale — including to families already with their own insurance — in a push toward national health insurance. All children below the poverty line ($20,650 for a family of four) are eligible for Medicaid. So the argument over SCHIP is not about "poor kids." Congress enacted the program in 1997 to help cover kids whose families aren't poor, but still can't afford insurance, basically in the income range of up to 200 percent of the poverty line. The Congressional Budget Office says that the rate of uninsured among these kids fell from 22.5 percent in 1996 to 16.9 percent in 2005. Many of these children, if uninsured, would get publicly funded health care anyway, through public clinics and the like. For them, SCHIP makes sense. The problem is that, as families earn more, they are more likely to have private insurance, and SCHIP lures them from private insurance onto government insurance. In a paper published by the National Bureau of Economic Research, economists Jonathan Gruber and Kosali Simon found that, as eligibility expands, "private insurance coverage is reduced by 60 percent as much as public insurance coverage rises." The CBO estimates that the reduction in private coverage is as much as 50 percent — in other words, for every 100 children enrolled in SCHIP, 50 children are dropped off private coverage. The technical term for this phenomenon is "crowding out"; the nontechnical term is "socializing medicine." Since the federal government picks up two-thirds of the tab for state-administered SCHIP programs, states have an incentive to expand coverage to better-off families — for every $1 they spend on the benefit, the feds pony up $3. And expand they have. Fifteen states cover kids and families above 200 percent of the poverty level. New Jersey covers kids up to 350 percent of the poverty level. New York wants to go to 400 percent. By making it explicit that federal SCHIP dollars will fund programs up to 300 percent of the poverty line (and occasionally even higher) and by throwing an additional $35 billion at the program throughout the next five years, the Democratic bill guarantees the program will grow well beyond its original purpose of insuring "near-poor" kids. This makes sense only as a step toward national health insurance for kids. An astonishing 47.1 percent of children are already eligible, as a matter of their family's income, for government insurance (although other factors, such as immigration status, might make them ineligible). Of children in families between 200 percent and 300 percent of poverty, only 9.8 percent were uninsured in 2005. There are less-sweeping means — like tax credits — to help these families get coverage in the overregulated, and therefore overly expensive, private health-insurance market. Meanwhile, there are 5.5 million poor or near-poor kids — roughly 60 percent of all uninsured kids — who are eligible for public insurance now, but aren't enrolled in public programs. These unenrolled kids are likelier to come from single-parent or no-parent families and families where all parents are unemployed. They are a hard-to-reach population, but the focus should be on them rather than families with the wherewithal to fend for themselves. Few things are as destructive of good public policy as outraged invocations of the "children." Democrats probably will benefit politically from their ploy on SCHIP, and advance a goal that goes far beyond low-income kids. Every weekday JewishWorldReview.com publishes what many in the media and Washington consider "must-reading". Sign up for the daily JWR update. It's free. Just click here. Comment by clicking here. Rich Lowry Archives © 2007 King Features Syndicate

Arnold Ahlert  Mitch Albom  Michael Barone   Dave Barry  Tony Blankley  Andy Borowitz  David Broder  Stratfor Briefing  Mona Charen  Linda Chavez  Ann Coulter  Greg Crosby  Larry Elder  Suzanne Fields  John Fund  Frank J. Gaffney  Lloyd Garver  Jonah Goldberg  Julia Gorin  Jonathan Gurwitz  Paul Greenberg  Lewis Grossberger  Victor Davis Hanson  Betsy Hart  Nat Hentoff  David Horowitz  Laura Ingraham  Cheri Jacobus Jeff Jacoby  Paul Johnson  Jack Kelly  Ed Koch  Ch. Krauthammer  Michael Ledeen  John Leo  David Limbaugh  Kathryn Lopez  Rich Lowry  Michelle Malkin  Jackie Mason  Dick Morris  Bill O'Reilly  Jim Mullen  Clarence Page  Kathleen Parker  Dennis Prager  Wesley Pruden  Tom Purcell  Jonathan Rauch  Celia Rivenbark  Robert Robb  Cokie & Steve Roberts  Pat Sajak  Debra J. Saunders  Culture Shlock  Roger Simon  Michael Smerconish  Thomas Sowell  Mark Steyn  John Stossel  Cal Thomas  Bob Tyrrell  Diana West  Dave Weinbaum  George Will  Walter Williams  Byron York  Mort Zuckerman  Robert Arial  Chuck Asay  Baloo  Chip Bok  Dry Bones   Lisa Benson  John Branch  Gary Brookins  John Cole  J. D. Crowe  John Deering  Brian Duffy  Everything's Relative  Mallard Fillmore  Jake Fuller  Bob Gorrel  Joe Heller  David Hitch  Jerry Holber  Steve Kelley  Jeff Koterba  Dick Locher  Chan Lowe  Ranan R. Lurie  Jimmy Margulies  Rick McKee  Michael Ramirez  Kevin Siers  Jeff Stahler  Ed Stein  Danna Summers  John Trever  Gary Varvel  Kirk Walters  How 2  Lori Borgman  The Savvy Consumer  Elder matters  Fixit  Dr. Peter Gott  GET A JOB! by Marty Nemko  Richard Lederer  Tech Maven  Every Monday Matters  Nutrition Myths  Bookmark These  Bruce Williams  How Stuff Works