Poverty In Iowa: Family Of 5 Earning Under $75,000 A Year

From the Iowa City Press-Citizen:

Legislators announced a health care package Tuesday that would extend coverage to all Iowa children.

Supporters said they hoped to achieve that goal within about three years.

Under the measure, the state would extend existing programs to an additional 25,000 youngsters who are eligible for health care but excluded because the state can't afford to pay for their coverage. An additional 19,000 children without coverage would get a state subsidy to enroll them in private health care plans...

...In essence, the legislation would expand programs like Medicaid while putting in place funding to cover more children from low-income families. Families with incomes ranging from 200 percent to 300 percent of the federal poverty level would likely be eligible for a subsidy to purchase private health coverage, [Representative Ro] Foege [D-Mount Vernon] said.

Taking the high number (300%), and basing it off the 2008 Federal Poverty Guidelines, that means a family including two parents and three children would qualify for a subsidy to purchase private health coverage up to $74,400 a year.

Considering that the median household income for Iowa in 2006 was $44,491 a year, that's quite a leap for a program that was originally intended to cover "poor" children whose parents couldn't afford health insurance.

So what happens when the parents who qualify decide that going gambling, buying cigarettes, getting drunk, financing giant HDTVs, and wasting their money on all manner of crap is more important than budgeting for health insurance? Is Hillary Clinton and the Democratic Party going to garnish their wages?

And what happens if the kids are regularly taken to the doctor, but the parents decide to just pay out-of-pocket and forego insurance? Those parents will be burned at the stake for not bowing down to government-mandated corporate health insurance.