SCHIP has not performed well in terms of stable coverage, access to primary care and preventive services, and the quality of care.

SCHIP Will Not Improve Quality of Kids’ Health Care

This is an interesting article that confirms some of my suspicions about the effectiveness of SCHIP in improving children’s health care. When I read the GAO report on SCHIP, I saw actions by various states that implied that the underlying problems with providing children’s health care were too tough to solve so they diverted the  SCHIP funds to other health care problems they thought they could solve. That is my interpretation on why so many adults are in the program and the lack of progress on the number of uninsured children. I was somewhat fascinated that these children’s health care effectiveness problems have such a low profile. After a little more reading at the Health Affairs web site it is apparent that many of the problems with the effectiveness of children’s health care are independent of whether the payments come from the government or the private sector. As the saying goes, “You can lead a horse to water but you cannot make it drink”.

I also found that the Secretary of Health has a blog, http://secretarysblog.hhs.gov/.