Children's Health and The Compassionate Conservative

President Bush has announced that he will veto a bill expanding the State Children's Health Insurance Program (SCHIP), a state-federal program that subsidizes health coverage for low-income people, mostly children, in families that earn too much to qualify for Medicaid but not enough to afford private coverage. The bill would provide an additional $35 billion over five years to the program, adding 4 to 5 million children to the 6.6 million people already participating. It would be financed by raising the federal cigarette tax by 61 cents to $1 per pack. It is supported by bipartisan majorities in both houses of Congress.

Bush says that the measure is “too costly,” unacceptably raises taxes, extends government health insurance to children in families that can afford private insurance, and smacks of a federal takeover of health care.

Isn’t it reassuring to see President Bush getting tough on budget matters? This is the same president who has so far spent $455 billion on a senseless, deadly, tragic war in Iraq. This is the same president who failed to veto a single spending bill enacted by the Republican Congress from 2000 through 2006, during which time the Republicans spent an extra $158 billion on earmarks for rotten pork projects. This is the same president who reduced taxes for wealthy Americans and obtained multi-billion-dollar tax breaks for his beloved oil companies while the companies were making record profits and soaking the public with increased gas prices.

The President makes the phony argument that expansion of SCHIP is a government giveaway intended for people who can afford their own health insurance. His minions claim that in some states, people making as much as $60,000 for a family of four would be eligible under the plan. Needless to say, most families benefiting from the plan will make far less than $60,000. The nonpartisan Urban Institute estimates that approximately 78 to 85 percent of the 4 to 5 million uninsured children who stand to gain coverage under the expansion have family incomes below 200 percent of the FPL (Federal Poverty Level-- $20,650 per year for a family of four). The bill would provide penalties and make it very difficult for states to cover children of families earning more than three times the poverty level. In most states, premium payments are required in order for families with incomes above 200 percent of the FPL to enroll in coverage.

The uninsured people who will benefit from the program are the working poor with children. Many are employees of small businesses or companies which do not offer health insurance. Many others are self-employed or young people. Private medical insurance and care for a "typical" family of four in the U.S. will cost over $13,400 this year according to the Milliman Medical Index. With the high cost of food, clothing, mortgage, rent, gas, heating, electricity, telephone, transportation, water, taxes, college tuition, home repairs, trash pickup, activities for children, and hundreds of other everyday expenses, they simply cannot afford $1115 per month for health insurance premiums. They do without insurance and pray to God that nobody gets sick.

Let us try to understand what it means today to be without health insurance. According to the prestigious Institute of Medicine of the National Academies, lack of health insurance causes roughly 18,000 unnecessary deaths every year in the United States. Although America leads the world in spending on health care, it is the only industrialized nation that does not insure all of its citizens. People who do not have health insurance do not get the necessary medical tests, check-ups, doctor visits, vaccinations, medical procedures, medications, surgeries, and other care that they need. It is meaningless to say that they will not be turned away at hospital ERs. Often, they will avoid going there until the last minute when it is too late.

Bush, pandering to his ultra right-wing base, claims that providing health insurance for children constitutes government infringement of health care; in other words, socialized medicine. Doesn’t he realize that we now have government-provided health care under Medicare, Medicaid, the Federal Employees Health Benefits Program, state programs such as Ohio’s OPERS, military health benefits under TRICARE, Veterans health benefits, and other programs? Does the existence of those programs constitute socialized medicine? Do they make us a socialist country? Of course not! The single-payer systems in all other industrialized countries have not made them socialist countries. They have simply made them more responsive to their people and less subservient to the power of the insurance and medical industries.

Why do all other industrialized countries have single-payer health care systems while we struggle under the domination of the wealthy, powerful insurance and medical industries? Because George Bush, the compassionate conservative, has no compassion for sick children. He has compassion only for rich supporters, oil barons, insurance companies, pharmaceutical giants, big corporations, and Arab emirs.

There is an organization in Ohio fighting for comprehensive health care for all Ohioans under a single-payer system. It is called “SPAN Ohio.” If you think all children and indeed all people in Ohio should be entitled to health insurance, contact SPAN Ohio, http://spanohio.org/.








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