Great posts/articles here:
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The Progressive
NPR
I don't get it. I simply don't get how anyone (Democrats and Republicans alike - but especially our current President) could put political reputation/perception ahead of a plan to provide health insurance for children.
SCHIP is NOT a federal health care program. It's NOT socialized medicine.
The "S" in SCHIP - that stands for STATE. The *states* run the program - not the federal government. And under SCHIP, the children are enrolled in private health insurance plans.
I heard Bush's speech today and I was so disappointed.
He got facts wrong over and over again. He claimed that the bill would allow families who made $80K to get coverage. That's simply not true. If you look back into the process of crafting the bill, you will see that New York, in fact, did propose this. But it was rejected and didn't make it into the final version. The truth is that this new bill actually put in stronger limits for whom the states can cover.
He also claims that it will cost too much money. This is a very short-sighted argument. The May edition of Pediatrics
has a study which calculates the true costs of children who don't have insurance. After you add up the lack of preventive medicine and emergency room visits, we certainly aren't saving any money as a society.
HR 976 is a Bi-Partisan bill. The house passed their version 360-45. In the Senate, it was 68 - 31.
Warner *and* Webb voted for it.
Specter *and* Clinton voted for it.
Hatch *and* Feingold voted for it.
If you can get that group to agree on anything - that in itself, is a minor miracle.
Our body of government created a bill to provide medical coverage to children that will save the country money in the long run. It's not perfect. But it PROVIDES MEDICAL INSURANCE TO CHILDREN.
And the President vetoed it because of petty politics. Sometimes I wonder how that man sleeps at night.
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2 comments:
This we definitely agree on.
As a family who has to self-insure because DH is self-employed (and at times gone without insurance due to the astronomical cost of self-insuring), I was sickened to see the President veto this bill.
Thank you for making the $83K point. I forgot to bitch about that in my post, and you're so right to call him out on that complete and utter misrepresentation. I've seen that figure cited again and again in chatrooms and on blog comments as a rationale for Bush's veto. Puh-freakin'-lease!
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