Vin Suprynowicz

If you ever saw George Romero’s “Night of the Living Dead” or any of its many sequels, you know that it’s not enough merely to nail some boards across the front door. The zombies will break in through the windows! Through the cellar! Anywhere! Like Democrats trying to bring in nationalized health insurance through the back door!

In this case, by “expanding eligibility” for a program that they swore up and down would be “only for poor kids, honest.”

In Washington, three Democratic governors told Congress on Feb. 26 that the Bush administration has made it virtually impossible for them to expand coverage under the State Children’s Health Insurance Program to more moderate-income children, as they want to.

The governors said their states seek to enroll tens of thousands of children in the government-subsidized health program because families earning $44,000 to $52,800 “cannot afford” private health insurance, but those efforts are threatened by an August directive from the Bush administration.

The directive said states must cover the vast majority of the poorest children already eligible for government coverage — 95 percent — before moving on to enroll higher-income children.

(Hint: If this program is so vitally necessary, why can’t they get 95 percent of the people eligible for it to sign up for it?)

Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick accused the administration of essentially reneging on its commitment to let the state cover families with incomes up to $52,800 for a family of three. Under the guidelines, the income limit is $44,000 for new enrollees.

Congress has tried unsuccessfully to expand the State Children’s Health Insurance Program. Last year, lawmakers failed to override two vetoes from President Bush. The vetoes blocked a $35 billion expansion of federal spending on the program over five years, which would have brought total spending to at least $60 billion.

The president said the expansion would have encouraged too many families to drop their existing private coverage so they could get free coverage from the government.

Duh. That’s precisely what congressional redistributionists want.

To say families declaring $44,000 to $52,800 in taxable income can’t afford medical care or private health insurance — regardless of the fact such coverage is often subsidized by employers — means one of two things: Either the congressmen disagree with these families’ spending priorities and want to rescue them from the consequences of their own poor decisions, or the very state governments now protesting in Washington have indeed eliminated low-cost insurance options by enacting so many politically correct “coverage mandates” that consumers are no longer allowed to buy a high-deductible Christmas tree without all the lights and tinsel.

But if Congress simply pays the medical bills of middle-class families that decided to spend their money on other things, what’s the reward for families who HAVE planned ahead and sacrificed to arrange health care coverage for their children? Their reward is to look like chumps.

A nation cannot long remain free if there is no real-world reward for wise economic behavior, and no real-world repercussions for spending the health care budget on lottery tickets, beer and a boat. We are thus encouraged to become a nation of wayward lambs, in need of a stern shepherd.

Let’s keep this simple. The redistributionists snuck in a “little” program called SCHIP, which was only going to be for really poor children, honest. Now they want to re-define “poor” as earning up to $52,700 — while Democrats already contend anyone earning $75,000 is too “rich” to get a tax rebate.

What’s the “over” for 2009? Want to bet the socialized medicine gang will want to expand the definition of “poor” to $69,500, peg that to inflation, and throw in free shots for grandma and Fido while they’re at it? Pretty soon the only people not covered by this program will be Rotary Club members between the ages of 45 and 50 in Kansas, Nebraska, and portions of South Dakota.

Watch out! There! The kitchen window!