http://kerry.senate.gov/bandwidth/home.html#Senator John Kerry "Kids First"
Address to Families USA January 27, 2005 Remarks as Prepared for Delivery
Thursday, January 27, 2005
For the past two years, I experienced a special privilege of meeting those families every single day all across our country - good people who love their communities, love their country, and are determined to build a better life for their kids.
What I saw and what they told me was moving and motivating. I'll never forget the single mother I met who lies awake worrying that her child's health care might cost more than she makes in a month. Moms and dads who save and save for their kids' college education, but still come up short when they get a bill for their elderly parents' health care that's higher than Medicare will pay. In Erie, Pennsylvania, I met a man named Albert Barker. He wonders how he'll pay thousands of dollars in medical bills. After he suffered a heart attack and underwent surgery, his employer stopped his health coverage just because it was too expensive. His wife said she just prays nothing else happens. The message is clear: In the United States of America, decent health care shouldn't be a faith-based delivery service -- that's wrong, and we can do better than that. In Council Bluffs, Iowa, I met a woman named Myrtle Walck - -82 years old, she still volunteers at her neighborhood school -- and she doesn't know what she'll do if the price of her medicine rises any higher. As it is, she pays a good chunk of her Social Security check - her only source of income - to the drugstore every month just to cover the cost of her two daily prescriptions. That's wrong, and we can do better than that. And in Jacksonville, Florida I met Renee Harris, who owned a school bus company that was in her family for over fifty years. But recently, she was forced to sell it because she could no longer afford to insure her workers or herself. That's wrong, and we can do better than that. In Cannonsburg, Pennsylvania, I met Lori Shelton who said to me that every month she pays her families' bills -- clothes, books, food, and doctor's bills - health insurance - -and she said, "Senator, I'm tired of having to tell my children 'no.'" I met people like Lori every day, and I'll never forget them. Their struggle didn't go away on November 2nd - the issue is as compelling today as it was every day of the campaign, and the mission is clear: we need to make something happen on health care. So today I want to ask you to stand up again and join me in a fight for a very simple proposition-that America can no longer afford to ignore the millions of children who aren't covered by health insurance.
On Monday I introduced the Kids First Act of 2005, which would cover every one of the 11 million uninsured children in America, putting the force of law behind a commitment that so many Democrats and Republicans have supported in principle over the years--a commitment that this Congress and this administration have failed to redeem for far too long.
Just think about it: nearly seven million of those 11 million kids are already eligible for coverage under the federal and state Medicaid and SCHiP programs. But they aren't getting the insurance we promised to them.
That's wrong, and we break a fundamental promise to those children again and again each day we tolerate the status quo.
The cost of our broken promises--the burden we place on families, on businesses, on communities, and on the states--also rises every day.
You know the numbers: Health care costs are up 64%. Drug co-pays are up 50%. Average family premiums are up $3500 a year. And the ranks of the uninsured went up by 5 million just last year, leaving 45 million Americans with no coverage at all. Increasingly - health care is out of reach for average Americans and those who get it struggle through a maze of maybe get covered, maybe get paid problems.
I fought these last two years for a comprehensive health care plan that expanded coverage and lowered premiums, but Washington today is unwilling to tackle comprehensive health care reform. But we can sure begin where the cost of immediate action is low, and the cost of continued inaction is so very high: with our children.
Today the President is in Ohio addressing health care but his effort is the same window dressing, avoidance of reality that we've seen the last four years. Unfortunately, the White House plan for health care will actually make matters far worse. It will let insurance costs get higher, not lower. It will abandon still more families and kids to fend for themselves. It will force still more sick people out of cheap preventive care and into expensive critical care, with the rest of us footing the bill. And it will decisively repudiate the national responsibility to promote quality, affordable health care at a time when health care is unmistakably a national challenge.
Pare back all the rhetoric, and the White House plan is this: let's not import less expensive drugs. Let's not negotiate better drug prices. Let's ignore the 45 million Americans without any health care coverage. Let's forget about patients' rights. Let's weaken coverage. Let's raise premiums with a phony small business health plan. Let's pretend the answer for families struggling to afford insurance is just another tax cut for the wealthy that leaves them behind. And while we're at it, let's dump the responsibility for covering low-income families and their kids on the states, and let them take the heat for dumping them altogether. That's how the president who promised to usher in a "responsibility era" proposes to deal with a real and present health care crisis, even as he seeks to hype a phony crisis in Social Security. You know what that sounds like to me? Sounds like a cradle-to-grave irresponsibility plan.
My Kids First proposal is meant to serve as the first step towards ending this irresponsibility era and keeping our promises. And when it comes to giving kids health care coverage, it's a promise we not only can afford to keep, but one we cannot afford to break.
Covering all kids would reduce avoidable hospitalizations by an estimated 22 percent. Putting aside the unnecessary pain and tragedy we cause when we let illnesses develop and grow, covering kids means replacing expensive critical care with inexpensive preventive care. And the long-term cost savings, not only in health care, but in education, in job training, in the stress on our families--are incalculable. We do know that children enrolled in public health insurance programs achieve a 68% improvement in measures of school performance. If no child is left behind in the doctor's waiting room, then we will have a much better chance of ensuring that no child is left behind in school.
While our proposal most definitely reestablishes a national responsibility for children's health care, it also builds a strong partnership with the states, which are responsible for actually running our childrens' health care system, and most of all, with parents, who are fundamentally responsible for raising healthy kids.
Instead of dumping the problem on cash-strapped states with a severance check and best wishes for success, my proposal offers states a new bargain: the national government will give states significant immediate fiscal relief in exchange for a state commitment not only to cover all kids, but to aggressively make sure they get the coverage they're eligible for. That means cutting out the red tape and bureaucratic obstacles that are responsible for about two-thirds of the gap between kids who are eligible and kids who actually get covered. And it is a net plus in dollars to cash-strapped states.
We propose a new bargain with parents as well. We will make it possible for them to use money set aside for children's health care to buy employer-sponsored coverage where it's available. And we will also allow parents who don't normally qualify for public programs to buy coverage for their kids at cost, and to maintain current coverage at an affordable cost. Their side of the bargain is to take advantage of these tools to get their kids covered, and if they don't exercise this basic parental responsibility, they will not be able to claim the child tax credit on their federal tax returns. I don't think that's too much to ask - if we believe drivers have a responsibility to buy car insurance, surely we believe parents have a responsibility to buy health insurance for their kids.
There's one other basic responsibility we accept in proposing this initiative: the responsibility to show how we will pay for it, even though we know the long-term payoff for this investment will be enormous. In a proposal called "Kids First," I will not add a nickel to the enormous debt already being dumped on our kids by this administration. Their version of this initiative is "Kids Pay First."
My proposal would finance the coverage expansion by asking something back from the least needy beneficiaries of Washington's big borrowing spree, individuals earning well over $300,000 per year. A portion of the Bush tax cuts benefiting these most-fortunate citizens would be repealed, making the top rate a bit closer to the rate under which wealthy individuals did so spectacularly during the 1990s. Like all Americans, the wealthiest among us would benefit greatly from covering all kids, through less taxpayer financed uncompensated care and fewer state and local tax increases in the short run, and through stronger families and communities and a better educated and trained workforce in the long run. That's the value of shared responsibility -- and that's a test of who really believes in the United States of America.
And in a city where politicians like to use the word "values," insuring kids is a test of who just talks about family values and who really values families. In the Book of James we are taught: "It is not enough, my brother to say you have faith when there are no deeds...Faith without works is dead." For me, that means having and holding to a vision of a society of the common good, where individual rights and freedoms are connected to our responsibility to others. It means understanding that the authentic role of leadership is to advance the good that can come to all of us, when we work together as one united community. That means health care for every child in America, and if anyone in Washington wants to have a debate about values, let's have at it. So here's my message to you and to all who will hear of this initiative through your voices in the days ahead. It's long since time to keep our promise to give every child a healthy start in life. We don't need to expand government; we simply need to fulfill commitments we have already made. We don't need more bureaucracy to cover all kids; we actually need less. We don't need Washington to do more than it should; we simply ask Washington to do its fair share in partnership with the states and with parents.
What we offer here are new opportunities as bold and innovative as the latest medical breakthroughs, and what we call upon are mutual obligations as old and as unchanging as the Scriptures. The best way to create a genuine "responsibility era"--a genuine commitment to families and to the values they reflect--is to begin with those to whom we owe the greatest responsibility--those whom we most value--our kids. Let's not just talk about it--let's put kids first.
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