Is SCHIP just for the poor?

Bloomberg.com: Family Making $56,000 Struggles With `Out of Sight' Health Cost:

"The family's monthly bills consume most of their take-home income. Pulling
out her checkbook, Lori said there's the mortgage ($1,500), utilities ($743),
phones and Internet service ($200), car insurance and gasoline ($205), property
taxes ($230), basic cable television ($48), food ($600) and credit- card
payments ($325) on an outstanding $11,000 balance. That's $46,212 a year, not
including clothes, school books and extra- curricular activities for Carlie.
...
There's also $352 a month on a home-equity loan the Siravos took out to
send Carlie to a private Catholic high school. Tuition is $9,000 a year. ``I'll
do anything for her to be happy and get a good education so she doesn't
struggle,'' Siravo said. Carlie is thinking of a career as a physical therapist.
If Schip weren't available, Carlie's parents could cover only the teenager
through a $230-a-month policy with Horizon Blue Cross Blue Shield of New Jersey,
according to the Web site ehealthinsurance.com. "

Now, let's see, take out: phones and Internet service ($200), basic cable television ($48), and $352 a month on a home-equity loan. We won't even look at the credit card balance - leave that in the mandatory-expenses budget. Take out the little luxuries in this family's life, and you've got $7200 a year, leaving the family $16,988 to pay fungible expenses, health insurance, retirement and savings. Their discretionary income is $16,988; Poverty level TOTAL income household for a family of 3 is $17,170. How is a family so poor as to require government assistance when their free-cash-after-mandatory-expenses/discretionary income alone is more than poverty level total income for a family?

Kudos to the family for wanting the best for their child. But why are taxpayers charged with paying health insurance so the family can afford private school? The cost of private school ($352) is higher than the cost of health insurance ($230). I thought government aid was for people who NEEDED it, but the article seems to suggest that aid is for families who have better ideas for how to spend their money. I don't begrudge the family their little luxuries. I enjoy a fiscally wasteful Starbucks latte, but I'm not getting government aid. I'm just saying that every family has to choose which luxuries to sacrifice and which to continue, and government aid is a safety net for necessities, not a way for beneficiaries to free up cash for more luxuries. Government aid should be for the poor. Private charity can help the middle class and lower middle class, and, heck, the rich, too, if they want - it's private charity.

As a taxpayer - paying very high taxes between California state, social security, medicare, and federal taxes - I have better ideas for how to spend my money than paying taxes to keep poor kids in private schools. We have a pretty strict budget, including $500-600 for groceries, eating out, cleaning supplies, kitchen supplies, wine, beer, and dog snacks, combined. In California, which is probably a comparable cost-of-living to New Jersey (though our utilities costs are a heck of a lot lower). We did purchase a new car last year, an unanticipated expense and one which wiped out our downpayment fund for buying another house. Granted, our budget allows us to save money for retirement, to save cash for large expenses, etc., but what we have left after savings, taxes, and insurance, is quite a bit less than the "working poor" seem to think when they vote for tax increases. Our home is under 1300 square feet, which, along with conservation, helps keep our utility bills low. We would really like a 3,000 square foot home, but the costs would be too high. And private school is a luxury that is simply too rich for our blood. But at tax time, we're "rich".

We got stuck with a family member's kid for a while (a "poor" family member), and had to keep him in private school to avoid causing excessive disruption to his life. We would not have had our own child in private school. We don't care for California's public schools, and our life plan does not lend itself to leaving California before we're too old to have kids, so we don't have kids. But we learned something from having someone else's kid - private schools are way more expensive than just the tuition. Every month, there's another fund-raiser selling overpriced junk to parents to "offset" the school's costs. At the beginning of every year, the teachers send home a shopping list, requiring students to purchase paper and kleenexes and paper towels and ink cartridges. Just hauling the kids to school is expensive. Our fuel budget climbed to $600 a month and then we bought a more efficient car; most parents at the school drove SUVs because they "had to" because the school put transportation responsibilities on the parents, for field trips and daily commutes and mandatory group projects and everything else they scheduled. Private schools are too expensive for the poor or middle class.

What are the Salvos teaching their child when they are, on the one hand, so "poor" they need aid, but, on the other hand, so "rich" they can afford private school AND cable AND extra-curricular activities, but on yet another hand, they cannot afford to insure themselves, to save for the future, to help their child with college? One of my in-laws did exactly this - receiving free car and housing from her parents, receiving state aid for her child (including free health insurance), and receiving tax aid through the Earned Income Credit. She made the exact same choice - put the kid in private school, skip the health insurance and life insurance. She died. She died of something that was easily detected and easily treated, but she didn't bother with checkups because she didn't have health insurance and the cost of healthcare was "too high" until she got really sick. Then, the State of California picked up the tab. The irony - when I found out she was on Medical, which meant she didn't have health insurance, I was shocked. I would have bought her health insurance if I had known. It would have meant cutting back, it would have taken some sacrifices, but we would have made those sacrifices to buy her health insurance. I was upset that she didn't ask for help for something so essential. When she died, we discovered that she had plenty of fluff in her budget - enough to buy health insurance. There were just better ways for her to use her money. In fact, with free housing, no budget for savings/retirement, and no taxes, she had more disposable income than we (the "rich" siblings) did. We would have made the sacrifices she wouldn't. She died and left a child behind.