He warned us. After signing the universal health care Trojan Horse S-CHIP bill into law yesterday, President Obama took his “next step” this afternoon — quietly signing a memorandum revoking the Bush administration’s attempts to ensure that government-funded health insurance for working poor people actually went to working poor people.

The road to Hillarycare is 铺砌 with incremental encroachments:

President Barack Obama made more children from middle-class families eligible for government health insurance Thursday by lifting a directive imposed by his predecessor.

In 2007, the Bush administration said it would strictly adhere to guidelines that limited the scope of the State Children’s Health Insurance Program.

A year later, it backed off its threat to penalize states that enrolled middle-class children without first proving they had enrolled nearly all poorer children first.

In a memorandum issued Thursday, Obama completely lifted the restrictions, which many governors and Democratic lawmakers said were nearly impossible to meet.

Obama said in a letter to the Department of Health and Human Services that “tens of thousand of children have been denied health care coverage” because of the directive.

Under the restrictions, at least 95 percent of poor children eligible for Medicaid or SCHIP had to already be in those programs before states could begin using federal funds to cover higher-income children.

Also, states covering higher-income children had to make sure individuals were without health insurance for one year before they were allowed to get government-sponsored coverage.

Obama’s memo was issued a day after he signed legislation that will enable about 7 million children to continue coverage through SCHIP and allow another 4 million to sign up.

“The way I see it, providing coverage to 11 million children through SCHIP is a down payment on my commitment to cover every single American,” Obama said Wednesday at a White House bill-signing ceremony.