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Bush Is Wrong: SCHIP Does Not Erode Private Insurance |
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Once again, President Bush is putting the welfare of Big Business before that of working families—but he can’t quite get it right. This time, trying to protect insurance company profits instead of watching out for our children’s health, he’s threatening to veto any expansion of health care coverage for children under the successful State Children’s Health Insurance Program (SCHIP).
Bush says he wants to prevent children from moving directly from private employer-based coverage into SCHIP. But his rationale is all wrong, according to a study by the Urban Institute (UI). The reality is that nearly three-quarters of SCHIP users (72 percent) were not covered by private insurance six months before they enrolled in the program, according to the study.
Another 14 percent lost coverage in the six months before they enrolled in SCHIP due to a lost job, an employer dropping coverage or a change in family structure such as divorce, separation or death of the covered spouse.
This leaves only 14 percent of SCHIP participants who substituted the public program for private coverage. The study points out that more than half of those people (8 percent) said they could not afford private coverage.
As many as 5 million uninsured children would be covered under the SCHIP reauthorization Bush is threatening to veto, according to another study by Families USA. Congressional leaders are meeting this month to work out differences between U.S. House and Senate versions of the legislation. The Senate bill would cut the nation’s rolls of uninsured children—estimated at more than 9 million—by about 4 million, a 44 percent drop. The House version, with a higher proposed funding level, would reduce the number of uninsured children by about 5 million, or 55 percent.
Ron Pollock, executive director of Families USA, says:
In the midst of what the nation has come to recognize as a crisis in our entire system of health care delivery, the president’s veto would be an astounding step backwards. Most of all, it would deny millions upon millions of young Americans access to critical health care services outside of the emergency room.
Click here to read the Families USA study.
The SCHIP program has been very successful. It has cut the number of uninsured children of low-income families by nearly one-third in a decade. But the numbers of uninsured children has been increasing in the past two years. Government statistics show the number of uninsured children jumped to 8.7 million in 2006, a 7.6 percent increase over 2005. That means more children need SCHIP than before.
Bush, who promised at the Republican National Convention in 2004 to expand health care for children, now says expanding SCHIP is a step toward socialism. The Congressional Budget Office says Bush’s SCHIP reauthorization proposal would actually drop children from the health coverage rolls. The program is set to expire Sept. 30.
Last week, hundreds of children carrying signs that read “Kids Need Health Care” and “Don’t Veto My Health Care,” joined more than 100 parents and grandparents, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and other House Democratic leaders on Capitol Hill to make it clear they want President Bush to sign legislation expanding SCHIP. Click here to read the whole story and here to see a video of the event.
Jared Bernstein, a senior economist with the Economic Policy Institute (EPI), who cited the UI study in a weekly Economic Snapshots column, says the results of the study:
pose a stiff challenge for those who want to restrict SCHIP access based on the concern that public coverage is crowding out private coverage. The fact is that cost pressures and the lack of a public mandate (a requirement that employers cover workers) are leading to the unraveling of the employer-provided system. We need public insurance to pick up the slack, both for children and their parents.
You can let Congress know how America really feels. Sign the petition for SCHIP expansion today—because in America, no one should go without health care. Click here for the petition.
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Regardless of whether or not a child’s parents can afford health care coverage—it is almost certain that a child with a treatable illness will end up in an emergency room with life threatening complications if they go without timely medical care. The parents won’t be any more able to pay, the child will be much, much more ill, and the emergency rooms in our nation are already filled with uninsured people who have run out of options. The hospital will treat those patients, sure—but who pays the bill? And what, in the interim, are they going to go without? Food? Utilities? Other medicines?
Why should children go without preventative care? Isn’t it less expensive to give kids regular check-ups and immunizations? Wouldn’t it make better sense for us to make certain that every case of strep throat doesn’t turn into scarlet fever? If a child is having problems with chronic illness, shouldn’t they be seen in neighborhood clinics on a regular basis, so they can avoid a costly trip to the E.R. because their asthma or diabetes is poorly controlled?
When I was growing up, health care was not an issue. My father’s job provided health care for his entire family—a wife and six children! I was fortunate to have good health care for my own children when they were growing up. But now, my employer has cut back drastically on family coverage for newer employees—and many of them can’t afford the out-of-pocket expense of the family coverage; if they even can qualify!
This is our national shame.Programs like SCHIP are helping families who fall in between the cracks—even union families are feeling the health care crunch—and we can’t let the government turn its back on our children. If there’s money for war overseas, there should be money for humanity here at home.
Bush is just thinking about himself and his close, rich, politically connected friends. He has not passed one law in favor of working class citizens, particularly children and the poorest of our people.
And yes, Bush IS clueless, and just plain wrong.