Compelling? ...

Tony Pugh at McClatchy Newspapers thinks it's "a compelling argument" against expanding the State Children's Health Insurance Program (SCHIP).

Statisticians boost effort to block children's health-insurance expansion by Tony Pugh

In its effort to stop Congress from expanding a public health-insurance program for low-income children, the Bush administration has hit on a compelling argument: the obscure but inevitable phenomenon known as "crowd out."

"Crowd out" happens when parents drop their children's private health insurance to enroll them in cheaper, taxpayer-funded coverage through the State Children's Health Insurance Program. The Congressional Budget Office estimates that for every 100 kids who enroll in the popular program now, 25 to 50 were previously covered in the private market.

Since a number of newly eligible children might already have what we have come to know as crappy health insurance and their parents may give up said policies (reluctantly, I'm sure) for better and cheaper coverage, well you know the rest ... those poor downtrodden powerless corporations may loose another victim to refuse care to.

But Tony Pugh of McClatchy finds the argument compelling ...

Jonathan Gruber, an economics professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, has studied crowd out extensively and likens it to snaring dolphins by mistake in a tuna net.

So the uninsured children are tuna? And those caught up in corporate insurance 'health scams' are dolphins?