Private insurance costs can be high - and for a number of reasons - but removing the healthiest population (kids) from the private health insurance pool with drive those prices even higher.

Um, these kids aren’t coming off the private insurer rolls. They’re already uninsured. Duh. And the sickest population (the elderly) is already on the government dime.

The kids who really need SCHIP are the ones denied coverage by the major carriers, too.

I know you guys have that extra-Constitutional “free market trumps all” ideology, but the rest of us have to live in the real world, where ideologies (no matter how well-intentioned) never function as advertised.