Not sure about some of your numbers, Jay.

According to the Census Bureau's August 2007 report (link below), Median household income in 2006 was $48,201, up from '05 in real dollars.

The poverty thresholds depend on family size, but the weighted average for a family of 4 is $20,614. Poverty rates were down slightly in '06 from '05.

http://www.census.gov/prod/2007pubs/p60-233.pdf

Not to be nit picky, but this should be median family income with eligible children.

Which would make possible sense if it was since the typical years someone has kids would intersect with their higher income years and eliminate most retired folks from the accounting. But that's just a guess.

Jay Tea:

Part of the problem here is defining what constitutes "poverty." The original point of SCHIP was to extend assistance to families that had too much income for Medicaid, yet had too little income to purchase their own health insurance. And without commenting on the merits of this bill one way or the other, I'll simply state that the point is to allow states more flexibility in defining where that point is; differences in local economies can affect the definition of who is "poor" and who is "not poor." The cost of living in Hoboken, New Jersey, just outside of New York City, is far higher than the cost of living in say, Dubuque, Montana -- and expanding SCHIP is a way to allow states to compensate for that.

--|PW|--

"I'll simply state that the point is to allow states more flexibility in defining where that point is; differences in local economies can affect the definition of who is "poor" and who is "not poor." The cost of living in Hoboken, New Jersey, just outside of New York City, is far higher than the cost of living in say, Dubuque, Montana -- and expanding SCHIP is a way to allow states to compensate for that." -- pennywit

Hey, conservatives don't do nuance, okay???

It's all bullshit. Just another step towards socialized medicine. A family of 4 making 80 grand is eligible for free health care for their kids.

Nothing is free folks. Someone has to pay for it and the fricking libs buy your votes with someone else's hard work.

Next year it will be 100 grand.

Then it will cover the parents.

Ooooh, free health care. If it costs nothing, it is worth nothing and everyone will take it for granted. Doctors won't go through the hell they go through and end up with 6 figure student loans to go work for the government.

It's all a bullshit vote buying scheme that the Dems use to keep people dependent on the nanny state. People don't know their freedom is being taken from them one dollar at a time.

The language of the bill doesn't extend eligibility to children who are uninsured; in fact, most of those who would be covered by the expansion of the program are already insured. Of course, there would be a strong incentive to take the free government handout instead of continuing to pay for private coverage.

Like the "competition" in Hillary's plan, it is merely designed to drive people to "choose" government plans over private insurance, with the object of squeezing the health insurers out of the market eventually. Then the socialists will claim it was "market forces" which dictated the change. A stacked deck - the only game the socialists know.

We will always have poor people. If double our spending on the poor, there will still be poor people. It becomes matter of what level of poverty we are willing to accept.

It would seem to me that there is a level where the returns on funding the poor are negative. Moving money from places where it can create wealth, employment, and opportunities to programs where it simply maintains people in a better state of poverty is counterproductive to eveyones long term interests.