"The White House said that President Bush would veto a bipartisan plan to expand the Children’s Health Insurance Program"
One of the Bush Administration's rational for this veto is that "non-poor" children will drop their enrollment in private health insurance plans. But, according to Bill Bentley, of Voices for America's Children:
“The real issue for SCHIP reauthorization isn’t whether it conflicts with private health insurance, but whether we have the national will to fully address the most basic needs of our children.
Enacted in 1997 by a Democratic president and a Republican Congress, SCHIP offers a blueprint for expanding basic health insurance coverage to uninsured children. Rather than argue over the effect of SCHIP coverage on insurance companies, we should focus on the impact on children.”
Dina Leiser, M.D., FAAP, Interim Executive Director, Doc for Tots
“Providing health insurance and the routine preventive care that comes with it, to our nation’s children is integrally tied to the very health and success of our nation. It is not only necessary and right; but it is a proactive, sound investment. Having seen first hand the devastating consequences of preventable conditions, I urge congress to spend $50 billion in new federal funding to provide health insurance to our nation’s children. The reality is that if we don’t expand SCHIP now, we will be paying higher costs in real dollars, emergency care, and in school failure, morbidity and mortality later.”
Sharon Claytor Peters, President & CEO, Michigan’s Children
“Making health insurance more affordable is a wonderful idea for the people who already have insurance, but it will do little if anything for the families who can’t afford to buy insurance now. Do you think a family of four earning $40,000 a year can set aside any of that in a health savings account? And a tax credit isn’t going to help them when they can’t afford the insurance to begin with.
We have 160,000 children in Michigan who need health insurance right now. These are children of the poor - the working poor who can’t afford to take their child for a wellness exam or to the doctor when he or she has a cold or fever. These are children who are going without health care or whose parents are going into debt just for a doctor’s visit. These are children who can’t afford to wait for tax reform that for many of them won’t help anyway.”
Children's Health Alliance: "As an example, the cost of treating one ear infection in an emergency room is enough to cover a child on Medicaid for an entire year."
The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities: "The Joint Tax Committee projects that making the capital gains and dividend tax cuts permanent would reduce revenues by about $30 billion a year, or about $25 billion a year in 2006 terms. This amounts to about twice what the federal government spent last year on Pell Grants to help low-income students attend college and more than twice what it spent on the Environmental Protection Agency, the Head Start Program, or the National Science Foundation. (See Figure 2.)"
