NYT editorial: Vetoing Children’s Health

[DeepModem Mom]

Vetoing Children’s Health
Published: July 22, 2007

President Bush is threatening to veto any substantial increase in spending for a highly successful children’s health program on the bizarre theory that expanding it would be the “beginning salvo” in establishing a government-run health care system. His shortsighted ideological opposition would leave millions of children without health insurance at a time when medical costs are soaring.

The president’s ire was provoked by a bipartisan bill approved by the Senate Finance Committee last week that would expand the so-called State Children’s Health Insurance Program, a joint federal-state effort that, over the last decade, has substantially reduced the number of uninsured children in the country. The program, known as S-chip, seeks to cover children whose family income is too high to qualify for Medicaid but too low to afford costly private coverage. It is due to expire on Sept. 30 unless Congress reauthorizes it.

The program now gets $5 billion a year in federal money to match state contributions, and the Bush administration has proposed a meager increase of $5 billion spread over the next five years. With health care costs escalating, that would not even be enough to cover all of the 6.6 million children who were enrolled at some time during the last year. Hundreds of thousands of children would likely fall off the rolls. And there would be no help for some eight to nine million children who now have no health coverage at all.

The Finance Committee rightly rejected that false economy. By a hefty 17-to-4 margin, it voted to authorize a $35 billion increase for S-chip spread over five years. Instead of reducing the number of children enrolled, the Senate bill would provide coverage for an additional 3.2 million children who are uninsured now. And in another boon for American health, the costs would be paid for by a steep increase in taxes on cigarettes and other tobacco products — a further disincentive for smokers.

Mr. Bush’s objections are primarily philosophical: that the bill would move more people into a government-run program while he would prefer to entice them into buying private insurance with the help of tax deductions, his favored approach for all uninsured Americans. Tax deductions will not make much of a dent in the ranks of the uninsured. And it seems wrongheaded to impose collateral damage on a successful children’s health insurance program while waging that broader ideological battle....

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/22/opinion/22sun1.html?hp

[RC]

1. We do not need health insurance. There is plenty of that now.

What we need is affordable health care. Get rid of the for profit money sucking middle man with their over paid boards and CEO's.

Expand Medicare and Medicaid to all from cradle to grave. The billions saved from what we have now could be put back into the health care system. Government can and does do many functions much better and cheaper than the private for profit sector.

Medical care need to be made a right for all and not a privilege for a few based on the ability to pay.

[Maribelle]

5. The two go hand in hand - affordable health care and affordable health insurance

And the egregious neglect of the over-the-top costs by this corrupt administration cannot be fixed overnight.

S-chips is a viable and reasonable interim solution for the left-behind children of low income working families struggling to make ends meet.

It is compassionate, in a land where corrupt republicans have attempted to alter the meaning of the word.

It is a health booster for communities where sick children are breeding grounds for communicable illnesses because parents cannot afford doctor visits and medications.

It is a relief for emergency rooms across the nation where the poor use their services as their primary care facility.

[roseBudd]

8. While I don't disagree that the for profit insurance model does add to the cost...

Medical care involves entities that have huge operating costs, whether they are for lots of highly skilled personnel (doctors, nurses, techs) and lots of support personnel, high cost equipment needs and higher than average construction costs.

Medical care will never be inexpensive in the sense that single payer would still require vast sums of money.

[John Q. Citizen]

10. Compare the 3% over head of medicare to the 15% to 25% overhead of private

insurance companies and it's a no - brainer.

[roseBudd]

11. I don't disagree, but we are still going to have $32,000 angioplasties

rather than $38,000, and those are still significant costs.

[Bitwit1234]

2. How damn stupid IS the bush administration

He repeats over and over....he is going to help the poor pay Health Insurance by tax deductions. This is a type of psychological bull. The people that need the help for children's health coverage don't need any more tax breaks. These people are so poor, do not make enough money, do not need any more tax breaks. They probably are so low on the income level they don't pay taxes. He is just using this tax break -- tax break crap to try to make people think he is giving them a helping hand.

[tom_paine]

4. The Royal Bushies are NOT stupid. They are highly competent, actually.

They are highly competent at what THEY are trying to achieve (a restoration of a limited monarchy in America under a New Totalitarian and Propaganda Guise).

The reason so many think them incompetent is that because when approaching things that matter to the American people, not the Royal Bushies and THE PARTY, they perform slackadaizically.

But in installing crooked judges, tearing down the Constitution, collecting illegal surveillance data on political opponents with which to neuter them by, etec etc ETC, they are very excellent indeed.

It's another demoralizing "in your face" to the Imperial Subjects. WE HAVE THE POWER AND THIS IS THE NEW MORALITY.

And it is, too.

[PinkyisBlue]

12. Bush is der leader who respects the sanctity of life.

The life of a zygote or embryo, that is; he can control those. It's those pesky, fully formed humans that give him a problem, talking about "rights" and "freedoms".

"It would be a heck of a lot easier to lead this country if we were a dictatorship, and I am the dictator."

[tom_paine]

3. It seems that the Royal Bushies like to do stuff to the Imperial Subjects that really show our place

I mean, REALLY ogreish shit, like deny a couple million blameless kids insurance.

They have think-tanked their way to the brink of some really evil Nazi shit. It seems to me as if they have been showing it off for the last six years in our faces and what're we gonna do about it?

Now, cutting off health insurance for children which could be paid for strictly out of the Halliburton skim.

[DeSwiss]

6. There is only one solution....

IMPEACH!!!


K&R!!!

[ananda]

7. The great American dream is dead.

The corporofascist rulers have destroyed
the will of the American people and the
idea of impeachment seems to be just
that.. an idea.

[Joe Bacon]

9. Now now now, let the churches take care of the needy

That is what His Ass Holeyness keeps telling us, and that is why His Ass Holeyness is pumping so many dollars into the hands of his preacher pals. Who needs health insurance when you can bribe a preacher to pray for divine intercession? And if there is no healing, well, that's God's will. Isn't it just so Christian to see all these right-to-lifers fight for Freddy and Francine Fetus when they are in the womb, and just like good Christians who follow Ayn (AS IN MINE) Rand, once little Freddy or Francine pop out of the womb, they're on their own.

:sarcasm: mode now off