In a letter to the editor in the Wall Street Journal, GOP presidential candidate Mike Huckabee mischaracterizes the effects of the SCHIP children’s health insurance bill that President Bush vetoed, saying that he opposes “moving two million children from private insurance to government insurance”:

I was not criticizing President Bush’s veto as a matter of policy, but as a matter of politics. I fully believe that Mr. Bush should have negotiated a compromise and not let it get to the point of a veto. Mr. Bush indicated he was willing to spend more than the $5 billion he originally proposed, but less than the $35 billion the Democrats pushed through, so there was clearly room to negotiate. In no way do I support spending an additional $35 billion, or moving two million children from private insurance to government insurance, or letting Schip be a step on the path to socialized medicine.

Huckabee’s claim that two million children who currently have private insurance would be “moved” to government insurance is misleading. As the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities has pointed out, the Congressional Budget Office estimate that Huckabee is referring to states that “about one-third — or 2 million — of the 5.8 million children who would gain SCHIP or Medicaid coverage by 2012 under the legislation would have otherwise had private coverage,” a group that includes children “whose families would — in the absence of SCHIP or Medicaid — have purchased private coverage for these children at some point in the future, possibly many months later.” In addition, the choices made by parents are, of course, voluntary — no one will be forced out of private insurance.