It’s a cautionary tale about liberal politics–with a billion dollar price tag and an instructive moral.
Once upon a time, early in the Clinton administration, the president and his wife picked out a public health problem to solve.
Maybe they wanted to show the goodness of their Democratic hearts. Maybe they intended to soften up the nation for the sweeping national health plan taking shape in Hillary’s head. Maybe they were just looking for a quick, high-profile success. Maybe all of the above.
The problem they chose was the supposedly abysmal lack of immunizations among very young children. The cause, they insisted, was the greed of vaccine manufacturers who had pushed the cost of
shots too high for millions of parents. As a solution, they wanted the federal government to buy all the vaccine, push down the price and give it away free as an entitlement, even to families who could afford it.
But the administration jiggled the immunization figures. It disregarded the major reason some small children had not had all their shots because it didn’t fit liberal dogma. The modified program Congress passed, which gives free vaccine to about 60 percent of American children, is already costing almost three times the original price tag. And Congress must now pay the huge and growing tab or risk being tagged by opponents as harming to little kids.
This week, the General Accounting Office blasted the vaccine program, calling it misconceived and mismanaged. Despite the political hazards, both Republicans and Democrats in Congress are now saying it must be dismantled or radically changed.
Right from the start, the Clinton administration either lied about how many young children had not had all their shots or officials didn’t bother to check their own numbers.
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, for example, told Congress that 37 million children younger than age 5 would be eligible for the free vaccine. Yet, noted Robert M. Goldberg, a senior research fellow with Brandeis University Public Policy Center, there are only 22 million kids that age in the whole country. Vermont alone, said the Clinton administration, had a million uninsured children–although the state’s total population is just 576,000.
In fact, by 1992 immunization rates were quite high and were improving when the Clintons began pushing their program. Plenty of free or low-cost vaccine was available. Most states already had programs for providing free shots for children whose families couldn’t afford them.
Most important, the White House ignored the key fact that almost all children are fully immunized by age five–because parents know their kids can’t go to school unless they are.
So if almost all parents can manage to get the necessary shots for their five year olds, why don’t they do so for their infants and toddlers?
The answer is obviously not the greedy pharmaceutical companies which make such useful political targets, but lack of motivation and effort on the part of neglectful, dysfunctional, troubled or indifferent parents. Blaming the victims–or, in this case, the victims’ parents–isn’t politically correct, of course.
Some states have had some success with carrot
and stick motivational ploys to boost immunization rates of young children. Maryland, for example, withholds $25 a month from welfare checks for every preschooler who isn’t up to date with shots and gives a $20 bonus for every one in the family who gets an annual checkup.
In its report, the GAO said it could not find good evidence that the cost of the vaccine was a major barrier that kept parents from getting their youngsters immunized. It also said the government’s record-keeping is a mess, its ordering system is full of flaws, it cannot detect fraud and waste and–worst of all–it can’t even be sure children who need the vaccine will get it.
Meanwhile, the administration has lost $700,000 as the result of ill-conceived and bungled plans, now abandoned, to build a warehouse to keep the nation’s entire vaccine supply. The White House intended to buy far more vaccine than necessary for the plan Congress passed and to handle all vaccine distribution, even to private physicians.
Now we are stuck with another unnecessary entitlement program that will cost taxpayers at least $880 million in 1996 and top $1 billion soon after.
But killing off or cutting back–or even rejiggering–an entitlement program is politically risky, especially when its avowed purpose is to prevent little children from getting sick.
Vice President Al Gore has already reacted to the GAO report by insisting that the administration will never let the vaccine program be scrapped, but might agree to some changes. Whatever Congress does, or doesn’t do about this entitlement, Clinton will have a campaign issue for 1996.
The liberal itch to throw big money and new laws into entitlement programs to deal with problems, whatever their cause, seems irresistible to many politicians. So now, with the billion dollar vaccine program, we will be paying for another cautionary tale that helps explain how the federal budget deficit got so high and why it’s so difficult to reduce.
