I am responding to David Engel's Oct. 11 Viewpoint, "Insurance program flawed."

The purpose of the State Children's Health Insurance Program is to help parents afford health care for their children who otherwise would not be able to, regardless of the technical definition of poverty. The erosion of employer-based health insurance in America has made health insurance unaffordable for many low middle class families.

In addition to the unavailability of private health insurance, low middle class families are ineligible for public health insurance because their income is above the means test threshold for state programs like SCHIP. Where do they get their health care? Nowhere, because they can't afford it.

The main problem in your argument is the assumption that health care is affordable for lower middle class families. It simply is not, and this issue is the crux of the debate about health care in the U.S. The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a conservative think tank for federal policy and free economic principle, reported that 15.9 percent of Americans were uninsured this year. This number is an increase from the recession figures of 2001! The expansion of SCHIP was intended to serve these very people, the 15.9 percent of Americans without alternative options.

The government has been able to minimally serve the health care needs of America's poor (by technical definition of poverty), and given this, the expansion of SCHIP was not intended to better serve this faction of the American economic class system. The expansion of SCHIP was to allow uninsured lower middle class families the ability to afford minimal health care-not for themselves-but for their children. Conservative opponents to SCHIP need to understand that there are times when ideology needs to take a backseat to effective action.

Yes, the SCHIP expansion would have been a move toward universal public health care, but by no means would it have laid the groundwork for further progression in this 'feared' direction.