KID'S HEALTH-CARE PLAN IS A BACK-DOOR SCHEME

Gov. Mel Carnahan has proposed a major health-care initiative that is contained in House Bill 811. The measure narrowly passed the House and awaits Senate action. Mark it down as one of the worst ideas of this or any other year.

As is increasingly common these days, left-wing notions are couched in the cause of aiding children. So it is with HB 811. The bill's premise is a dubious notion of a health-care "crisis" among uninsured children. Sound familiar? It should. This is precisely the crisis-mongering that heralded the arrival of the Clinton health scheme back in 1993-94. HB 811 may be understood as the Left's Plan B after the failed Clinton health-care plan.

HB 811 seeks to get the public schools of our state hooked on Medicaid dollars, the better to establish health-care clinics in our schools and to bypass those pesky folks known as parents. States such as Pennsylvania, Kentucky and Florida have gone down this road and reaped the whirlwind: exploding Medicaid costs and angry parents. Missouri doesn't need to travel this road.

As it did in these other states, the bill comes Missouri from an explicitly liberal health-care advocacy group, the Robert Woods Johnson Foundation. RWJ is a charitable organization (1996 assets: $5.6 billion) endowed by a fortune from the Johnson & Johnson company. RWJ officials were involved at every crucial step in the formation of and advocacy for the Clinton health-care plan.

RWJ goes around offering states seed-money grants -- $100,000 or so -- to being health-care schemes. The state applies to the foundation and agrees to RWJ's many restrictions. These include turning over sensitive health-care data to the foundation for its use. (Governor Carnahan has already signed and sent in Missouri's application even before the bill has passed both houses of the General Assembly.)

Is this a proper function of state government? Where is the accountability? A private-public corporation would be established with a board of unaccountable bureaucrats appointed by the governor. How will Missourians be able to know what really goes on here, and what chance will ordinary folks have to affect the course of this crucial body?

Lawmakers should just say no to HB 811.