JACKSON — While Democratic gubernatorial challenger John Arthur Eaves Jr.'s heart may be in the right place in his proposed Kid Care plan to provide health insurance for every child in Mississippi, his math to pay for the program both now and in the future is at best uncertain and at worst irresponsible for state taxpayers.
Eaves proposes to provide health insurance for the more than 146,000 Mississippi children who are uninsured at a total cost of care of $1,333 per child and at a cost to the taxpayers of $197 per child, according to his proposal.
The Madison Democrat's plan estimates that if 146,000 children enrolled, it would cost state taxpayers $28 million every year.
In the Eaves Kid Care proposal, this explanation is offered for how the program functions:
“The program will use the mechanism already in place under the State Children's Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) to provide … the same medical care and services offered by SCHIP, but with broader eligibility.”
Eaves spokesman Jeff Bridges said the program is modeled after the Illinois “All Kids” program.
The Eaves plan bases the $1,333-per-child cost of care on a study by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. The plan claims the $1,136 difference between the $1,333 cost of care per child and the $197 per child cost to the taxpayers would be made up in premiums and co-pays to be paid by the recipients of the Kid Care plan.
But the Mississippi Division of Medicaid released data earlier this year showing that in fiscal year 2006, 63,547 Mississippi children received SCHIP benefits that cost $124.2 million, or $1,954 per child — a difference of $621 per child over what the Eaves plan projects as the cost of care per child.
Brian Perry, a spokesman for incumbent Gov. Haley Barbour's re-election campaign, said that the current monthly premium for a child on SCHIP is $184 per month, or $2,208 per year. Perry called the discrepancies in the cost-of-care estimate in the Eaves plan “a $100 million mistake” and said the “Eaves plan doesn't add up.”
But let's take campaign politics out of the equation. The Eaves plan projects the costs of providing health care for 146,000 Mississippi children at $194.6 million.
Eaves says we can pay for it with $28.8 million in state funds plus $51 million in co-payments from the recipients plus $114 million in premiums from the recipients.
In 2006, Mississippi's SCHIP provided health care for 63,547 children for $124.2 million. The Eaves plan could add an additional 82,453 kids to the public health care rolls and even with the SCHIP program's sliding scale, the discrepancies between what Eaves says the program will cost and what SCHIP has cost in the past is obvious and telling.
It's more than a $100 million mistake. Eaves is telling Mississippi they can more than double the provision of public health care for children without more than doubling the costs.
And he's putting co-payments on the poorest of the state's poor children while at the same time making public health insurance available to a family of four with an annual income of $134,225.
Without congressional and White House action, SCHIP will expire on Sept. 30. Mississippi's SCHIP program is running out of money based on the 60,000 children already on the rolls, and the Legislature has made no move to provide additional funds.
Interestingly, the Illinois program upon which Eaves says his Kid Care plan is based is growing. Democratic Gov. Rod Blagojevich bypassed the Democrat-controlled Illinois Legislature to make a $16 million expansion of that state's All Kids program that will cover people between 19 and 21 years old — which critics say could leave Illinois taxpayers obligated to an open-ended entitlement program. They're right.
