SEARCH
House Republicans Kill Children’s Health Bill |
|
President Bush got his wish today to deny health care coverage to millions of uninsured children when the House failed to override (260-152) his veto of a bill to reauthorize the State Children’s Health Insurance Program (SCHIP). A two-thirds majority is needed to override a veto; today’s vote fell about 15 votes short.
The vetoed bill would have provided affordable quality health coverage for 10 million mostly low-income children—the 6 million already enrolled plus an additional 4 million who would have been eligible.
Says AFL-CIO President John Sweeney:
It is hard to believe in this weakening economy that anyone could justify denying working people the means to take care of their children’s most basic needs.
By voting against health insurance for children, the president and a few partisan members of Congress are making life even harder for the millions of families who are already struggling to pay the mortgage, the rent, the heat or any number of household bills as they pile up.
Bush first vetoed SCHIP renewal in October and an congressional override attempt failed. After a second SCHIP bill—revised to meet Bush’s objections to the original bill—passed with bipartisan support, Bush vetoed that bill in December.
With funding for SCHIP set to expire following Bush’s veto, Congress approved extending funding for the program through March 2009 at the current level, covering the 6 million children already enrolled. The extension also added additional funds to ensure that no child is dropped from the SCHIP rolls.
But the 4 million children who would have been included under the vetoed bills are still without health insurance. Across the country, nearly 9 million children are without health insurance.
Bush issued a series of misleading objections to the SCHIP renewal, including the claim that the bill to provide health insurance to kids who now have none would somehow drive them away from the private insurance industry. Says Sweeney:
The idea that these families could purchase private insurance is absolutely ludicrous and shows how out of touch President Bush and the obstructionist Republican minority in Congress are with what life is really like for working people in this country. The cost of health care is out of control.
Bush’s fight against insuring more children under SCHIP goes beyond the renewal legislation. In July, the Bush administration issued new rules to prevent states from expanding SCHIP to more children. With the SCHIP avenue blocked, several states developed plans to cover more uninsured kids through Medicaid. But the Bush administration refused to approve the plans, reversing long-standing federal practice that allowed states to set their own Medicaid eligibility rule.
Click here to learn more about the health care crisis and the AFL-CIO health care campaign.
Last week, the AFL-CIO and Working America launched the 2008 Health Care for America Survey. So far, nearly 10,000 people have filled out the online survey, and more than 2,000 have posted their personal stories about the cost of health insurance, quality of health care, access to prescription drugs and solutions to the wide array of health care problems the nation faces.
Click here to fill out the survey and tell you health story. You can vote here on the stories you think make the most impact.
3 Comments
Sorry, the comment form is closed at this time.
Would be nice to see a posting of the legislators who voted against SCHIP.
If we had Single Payer Universal Health, children would be covered, their parents, grandparents, brothers and sisters, cousins, EVERYBODY would be covered.
Not one of the major candidates offer any relief when it comes to their “Universal” health plans. More $$ in the pockets of the insurance industry, more coverage? Don’t count on it!
Hmmm, now that Bush and his Republican hoodlums have abandoned children again, Democratic leadership must be searching for something to give them as a reward. That’s what it did when Bush vetoed SCHIP before….they gave him and his his anti-worker, anti-union mob the anti-worker, anti-union US-Peru Free Trade Agreement.
Ever get the impression that people back in D.C. just don’t get it? (Or else they get it but are purposely shafting America’s working class.)
The Republicans just don’t care. They are beyond taking care of anyone in this country who cannot give them something in return. They have stopped being elected public officials and have become instead self-serving neocons who worship the almighty dollar. What the Democrats seem to be doing, however, is beyond me. I just don’t get it.