From Ernest Istook:

We’re at the brink – the point of no return. Step by step, America’s children have been weaned away from their parents so that 46 percent of them get their health care from government instead. The "SCHIP" bill being pushed in Congress will raise this by another 10 percent, meaning the majority of our kids would be in federally controlled health care.

This program was intended to serve the poor, but once more than half of our children are put into it, there’s no turning back. The pied piper of government will next pull in the remaining kids, then take over everybody else’s health coverage. Uncle Sam has been gradually crowding out private health care for years, but most people haven’t noticed that almost half of all U.S. health care is now paid by government (meaning with our tax money).

We’ll be told it’s unfair to leave the rest of the children uncovered, almost as bad as if we locked them out of public schools. And once the children are covered, shouldn’t we cover their parents, too? And finally, why not cover the medical bills for those who have no kids at home?

The left has been dreaming of this for decades. Rather than acting to make health care affordable, their agenda has helped push costs higher, and then uses the high costs as the excuse for a federal takeover.

Before Hillary Clinton’s Health Care Task Force floundered in 1994, it developed a fallback plan, described in its documents as "Kids First," to achieve government controlled universal health care "phased in by population, beginning with children. Kids First is really a precursor to the new system."

In 1997, "Kids First" became SCHIP, as President Clinton the First persuaded enough Republicans (led by Utah Sen. Orrin Hatch) to join Democrats like Sen. Ted Kennedy in creating the program. The initials stand for "State Children’s Health Insurance Program," but it’s mostly federal money being laundered through state treasuries and insurance companies.

It has quietly expanded by making more people eligible, bit by bit. Today, of 78 million children in America, 29.5 million get health care from Medicaid, and another 6.5 million get it from SCHIP. That’s 46 percent. The bill vetoed by President Bush would add another 5.8 million children (4.1 million more with SCHIP and 1.7 million more via Medicaid). That would be 54 percent of America’s children covered by tax dollars instead of by their parents – a clear majority. The proposal’s chief sponsor, Rep. John Dingell, D-Mich., says the ultimate goal is to have 100 percent of America’s kids on the program.

Read more at: World Net Daily