On Fox News Sunday Bill Kristol stated "I'm happy that the President is willing to do something bad for the kids..."
Kristol's core argument was that the Bipartisan SCHIP bill which has passed both the House and Senate represents a massive explosion of this health care "entitlement". This he feels is good thing for Republicans to argue against, and while they're at it he really didn't like how Democrats were using this situation to "exploit" children. Tsk. For shame.
KRISTOL: How pathetic is that, a twelve year-old kid giving the radio address? Nancy Pelosi "praying for the President"? You really wonder how stupid they think the American people are?
This was to cover children between 100% and 200% of poverty. Democrats are now expanding it up to 300% There are two ways, if you think you need to help people between 200% and 300% of the poverty line - you can do it two ways, you can expand government insurance or make it easier for people to by private insurance. Republicans want to make it easier, through the tax code, to by private insurance - Democrats want to expand government insurance.
To his credit Juan Williams (taking a break from his usual role as Bill O'Reilly's Favorite House Negro) pushed back hard on this point.
WILLIAMS: I’m surprised to hear you say, "Oh, how dare you use a child." What do Republicans do except use soldiers and everything else to bolster their arguments.
KRISTOL: Soldiers aren’t children.
WILLIAMS: Oh come on. Yeah, use uniforms and everything else. And in fact, put on — politicians get in uniforms and get on ships to talk about "missions accomplished." C’mon.
Williams is still a Spineless Faux News Token Democrat Doormat, but he does put up a good front sometimes doesn't he?
Here's a little factoid that the Right Wing doesn't want anyone to know - Private Health Insurance in America is far more expensive than any other health care in the world.
This graphic (which I orginally posted on "Michael Moore vs Sanjay Gupta: Part II") is taken from the latest UN Health Care Costs Per Capita report (pdf) on the Human Development Index (Top 10 Rankings for best quality of life standards by country).
Although the U.S. only ranks at number 8 on the Human Developement Index, the private portion of it's health care costs are literally through the roof, creating an overall cost for health care that is nearly twice that of every other industrialized nation.
With this in mind we can go back to Bill Kristol's claims that Democrats want to expand public health care so that people who are currently uninsured can find care and contrast it with Republicans who simply want to continue to line the overflowing pockets of the private health care providers.
This reality provides the answer to the question that Kristol dares not pose : How in the world is it possible that people earning $83,000 still can't afford health insurance for their children? His suggestion of tax incentives doesn't even address why the hell it costs so much, does it? The problem is that health care in this country is rationed, even the most elementary understanding of the economics of supply and demand tell us that when you have a constant and steady demand for a service the only way to increase profits is to choke off access to the supply.
Why is our private health insurance so expensive? Because it can be as long as the access and supply is limited. Mass production drives prices down, exclusivity keeps them high.
Beyond expanding access to public care, we also need to address the rabid profit incentives within the private health care industry to falsely deny claims, and create more and more barriers to care such as "pre-existing condition" clauses. It's not that turning a profit is wrong, it's just that doing it literally on the backs of the dying and suffering, particularly children, is just plain obscene and people like Kristol damn well know it.
They just don't care because Money Means All to them.
In addition, Factcheck.org has done an extensive debunk of the Bush Administration claims that the proposed expansion of SCHIP would provide health care for families earning as much as $83,000 a year.
President Bush gave a false description of proposed legislation to expand the 10-year-old federal program to provide health insurance for children in low-income working families.
He said it "would result" in covering children in families with incomes up to $83,000 per year, which isn't true. The Urban Institute estimated that 70 percent of children who would gain coverage are in families earning half that amount, and the bill contains no requirement for setting income eligibility caps any higher than what's in the current law. (The compromise bill that was released a few days after Bush's press conference does rescind an administration effort to block New York state from increasing its eligibility cap to that level.)
He also said the program was "meant to help poor children," when in fact Congress stated that it was meant to expand insurance coverage beyond the poor and to cover millions of "low-income" children who were well above the poverty line. Under current law most states cover children at twice or even three times the official poverty level.
Kristols claim that the Democratic expansion of SCHIP would provide health care for children at 300% poverty is bogus - the current law already provides for this depending on the state.
Media Matters also found that according to the CBO Bush's counter proposal to only increase SCHIP funding by $5 billion over the next five years would actually result in a $9 billion net reduction in funding and keep nearly 10 million children off the system.
So again we hear the mantra that "socialized medicine is bad", yet somehow throwing children either out of the health care system entirely, or forcing them to pay private insurance through the nose (using tax payer subsidies/incentives) is somehow an improvement? It remains amazing to me how this Administration can smile and giggle as they literally yank the health care from the mouths of babes - yet they do.
It's not the Democrats that are making them appear heartless, cruel and callous - they do a fine job of that all on their own.
Vyan
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