Bush Vetoes SCHIP Again: Denying Millions of Children Health Insurance

Catherine Morgan — Sat, 15 Dec 2007 00:11:24 -0600

For the second time, our president has vetoed a bill that would have given health care to poor and uninsured children. There are 9.4 million children uninsured, and this number is UP by about 1 million from last year.

How is it that the richest country in the world won't insure it's most vulnerable?

Democrats even lowered the spending on SCHIP from $50 billion to $35 billion, in hopes to get this important bill passed for the children. You are probably thinking that $35 billion is still an awful lot of money, but to put that number into context...Bush's "War against Terror" has already cost about $500 TRILLION.

From Media Matters...

On the December 13 edition of CNN's The Situation Room, correspondent Brianna Keilar said: "In recent weeks, Congress has stalled on legislation to expand the children's health insurance program." In fact, Congress twice passed legislation to reauthorize and expand the State Children's Health Insurance Program (SCHIP), but President Bush vetoed the first bill on October 3 and the second on December 12. The House voted on whether to override Bush's first veto on October 18, but the attempt failed, 273-156 -- 17 votes short of the required two-thirds majority. The House voted to postpone consideration of an override of Bush's second veto until January 23, 2008.

Here are some interesting statistics from Nicole at Daily Mantra...

We truly have the choice to change things; it’s not about lack of funds. The war in Iraq has so far cost $476,746,000,000 and counting. According to NationalPriorities.org, we could have insured around 285,476,000 children for one year for that amount of money (the US population as a whole is 303,588,000, so we'd have quite a lot of change if we just insured our kids). As the death toll in Iraq rises how many Americans have we lost here at home through lack of healthcare? And how many more lives have been destroyed by the financial ramifications of getting well?

This is what Mary Shaw of The Smirking Chimp had to say...

According to an article in yesterday's Washington Post, "Bush cited the same reasons that led him to veto a version of the bill on Oct. 3 -- that it raised cigarette taxes and provided coverage for children of middle-class families instead of focusing on the working poor."

First I'll address his second objection -- that the bill would provide coverage for children of middle-class families. Um, there are a lot of middle-class families in this country who don't have health care coverage, and it's not necessarily their fault. They work. They work very hard. But they cannot afford medical insurance. And so, in the case of a catastrophic illness or injury, they're out of luck. And, thanks to George W. Bush, if that catastrophic illness or injury happens to a child, well, tough. The kid will just have to suffer. And maybe die.

As a single mother I feel blessed that I have never had to worry about my children not having health insurance, especially since I know there are so many others that do. I can't imagine having a sick child and not being able to take them to a doctor for treatment. And knowing that it is our own president who stands in the way of these children getting access to health care...Well, it just sickens me. Has this president never heard of compassion? Is the word empathy in his vocabulary?

How do you feel about this second veto of the SCHIP program? Will you vote for a presidential candidate that shares Bush's desire to prevent uninsured children from receiving health care? How important of a campaign issue is this to you?

I'm now also working with Care2 on their Election Blog, you can see a post I did on Bush's Veto of SCHIP here.

Contributing Editor Catherine Morgan
also at CatherineBlogs.com and The Political Voices of Women

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Bush Vetoes SCHIP Again: Denying Millions of Children Health Insurance