Are You For Good Government or Bad Government?

The battle over the State Children's Health Insurance Program is heating up. This week, Congress is set to pass legislation to cover millions more kids. President Bush plans to veto the bill. There is bipartisan support for expansion in both houses, but at the moment, we can only be sure of a veto-proof margin in the Senate.

President Bush led his Thursday press conference and Saturday radio address with misinformation about the bill, in an attempt to give political cover to House members who may risk their seats to sustain a veto. This misinformation has been peddled by the White House and others in the conservative movement all summer, but the effort has failed to turn the public against the bill. And last week, key Republican senators debunked Bush as well.

Why are Bush and the conservative movement spending so much effort fighting popular bipartisan legislation? What is the SCHIP debate really about?

Two things.

One, of course, is the children themselves: 6 million currently covered under SCHIP (less if conservatives get their way) and 9 million still uninsured.

Without more health insurance, more kids will get sick and die. Period.

Conservatives, being compassionate and all, will swear up and down they don't want more sick kids. They just don't want "big government" to deal with them.

Now, I could give you some defensive arguments to insist SCHIP really isn't "big government." States take the lead in implementing the program. Private insurers generally deliver the coverage.

Which would be true. But that would leave out a critical part of the program's success: our federal government.

We all chip in and fund children's health insurance through our federal government. And we make sure the coverage is decent by regulating the private companies involved.

In return, we all save money and strengthen our economy as kids get more preventative care, instead of waiting for grievous illness to take them to the ER.

This is not theory. While more and more adults have had to go without health insurance, SCHIP has increased the percentage of kids with health insurance.

It is simply a proven success.

And local media has begun introducing their readers to kids who are alive and well thanks to that success.

None of this was happening, or would happen, without government - without us citizens calling on our federal government to invest our taxes and set ground rules to solve this problem.

Having said that, this is not really a debate of government versus no government.

This is a debate between good government and bad government.

As I wrote in an earlier post:

Bush and fellow conservatives are just fine with government subsidies to prop up Medicare Advantage private plans, even though they cost taxpayers more than the traditional Medicare public plan. They are just fine keeping the children's insurance program, so long as we underfund it and millions remain uninsured. As Robert Borosage commented earlier: "faced with a choice of providing children with health care or protecting the profits of private insurance companies, the president chooses the latter."

Conservatives fear losing the SCHIP debate, because they fear losing the entire health care debate. This fear is unchanged from 1993, when they decided they had to kill universal health care, because "[i]ts passage will give the Democrats a lock on the crucial middle-class vote and revive the reputation of the party."

Politics over policy. Party over people. Bad government over good government.

SCHIP is not health insurance for all. It's just a rare bright spot in our overall inefficient, convoluted, patchwork, private-sector dominated health care system.

Expanding SCHIP does not automatically get us to quality, affordable health insurance for all.

Nor does defeating SCHIP -- and further upsetting the public by worsening our health care system -- ensure conservatives (despite their delusions) that they can stop the momentum for universal health insurance. Perhaps the opposite.

And that bigger debate is rapidly coming, as Sen. Hillary Clinton's new health care proposal joins plans from Sen. Barack Obama and former Sen. John Edwards.

To address the myriad of domestic problems that Americans want solved, including our shoddy health care system, we need effective government.

To win these debates with the public, we need to be able to propose solutions that involve our government.

That means when we have a program where our government has shined, we must praise it for that very reason.

The fundamental question that is always before the public is: whose people and which philosophy knows the difference between good government and bad government?

We must make it clear: if you're against SCHIP, you don't know good government. And you can't be trusted to lead on the challenges we all face.

This is an updated version of an earlier post at the Campaign for America Future's blog

Follow Bill Scher on Twitter: www.twitter.com/billscher

Comments

[realitytrumpsbull]

I'm for good government with lots and lots and lots more public accountability, and a much much much smaller budget, and a lot less handout programs.

[PerryWhite]

I want less government.

[robinhood1]

Have you seen the pictures of the picketers outside the GM plants on various web sites? Many of them look like they are only a few years away from death's door. Too many cheeseburgers, too many big gulps, too many beers and maybe too many cigarettes. The workers need to take more responsibility for their own state of well being. Before these guys pop off, they will undoubtedly incur many thousands of dollars of medical expenses.

By all means, expand the children's health care program. The kids didn't have a choice about coming into the world. Wile we are increasing cigarette taxes to pay for an expanded S-CHIP program, raise the Federal tax on alcoholic beverages, impose a Federal restaurant tax and a Federal snack food tax to discourage bad eating and drinking habits. Besides, the Feds need the money to pay for Medicaid for the poor.

[Herrington]

Sure bring back Prohibition. An unhealthy diet does not make people less human. It makes them average humans. Why even save the children? They will turn out to be fat and eat naughty things as well. Blaming the sick for being sick is fascism, pure and simple.

If you want to try and tack a couple of extra years onto the end of your life fine. But don't assume that anyone else buys into the voodoo that you do.

[givemycountryback]

Well, It would be nice to insure all the children in this country. But how can a sick parent care for their children. The adults need it as much if not more than the children. So we need to go to national health care like all the other civilzed countries in the world do. But it is becoming apparent more each day, that we are not civilized at all. Bush and his cronies are mean spirited, evil people. They are not christians. And I mean all conservatives, not just neo cons whatever that means. Conservatives are for slashing programs for anybody who needs a helping hand. Remember Raegans ketchup is a vegetable school lunch. They want tax cuts for the rich and forget the rest of us.Basically, They suck.

[deadscout]

Government is good for 99% of americans. It is bad for the 1% who are rich. It assures that everyone gets a little, even if it is not a fair share. It prevents the rich from monopolizing and stealing every single dime from everyone. Sharing = jesus = good. Pure capitalism is getting money at any cost. The individual is all important more so than the group. Pure capitalism = republican = evil.
We need more good government to protect us from the rich. The only logical conclusion to pure capitalism is that one or two at the top eventually have all the money. That is when the little guys realise there's 100,000,000 of us and only one of him and they kill him and start over. It usually takes around 200 years and happens over and over. Unless the republicans can be exposed for what they really are in a way that simple people (50% of people are below average) can truly understand (which is why the GOP is so successful with simple slogans, simple people understand what they are saying. they don't understand what intelligent people say so tend to side with what they can at least understand as opposed to what they don't) what is really going on, then revolution will be inevitable.

[Herrington]

Exactly deadscout, the natural objective for a businessman is monopoly. Unrestrained capitalism results in monopoly. The Roosevelts saw it coming and averted the last cycle by curbing the robber barons and fostering fair labor practices. Their wealthy bretheren despised them for it, called them socialists, but they saved their detractors butts for three generations. Now, the pot is boiling again. This time I guess the rich folks think that the MSM will save them. Guess again and curb your greed guys.

[jake106]

Bullshit!

Government can't get it right, ever. Just look at the examples readily in hand right here in our country in the last 20 years. Most of you like to bash Bush as if he were solely responsible for the Katrina boondoggle, but the sad truth is, waiting on the government to fix your problems is going to cause situations like that. Veterans health benefits? Handled by the government. Bankrupt Social Security? Handled by the government. Medicare? Handled by the government. Welfare? Handled by the government. No Child Left Behind? Handled by the government. Civil infrastructure? Handled by the government. Do we see a trend yet?

Another bureaucracy is not the answer. Health care for all sounds soooo beautiful when you say it like that, but it isn't going to work. All the failing entitlements we've already created can attest to that, but it seems obvious that we are going to forge ahead with it anyway and add yet another bazillion dollar entitlement. And how are we going to pay for it? Why, we will raise taxes, of course. As if I really want to give another few hundred dollars a month to a government that can't fucking actually save it, no matter who is in office. Why you guys are so willing to give your money to politicians is beyond me.

[Herrington]

Ok jake106,

Veterans health benefits, which incidentally Bush and the Republicans has cut several times since taking office, are how much worse than the zero health benefits of 46 million Americans?

Social Security is not bankrupt and will not be until 2047 as it is. The only reason it is in peril of failing at that date is because of the Bush tax cuts. Social Security is far from being a failure. It is the most cost effective and dependable component of a retirement plan available to the public.

Medicare operates with 6% administrative overhead, making it the most efficient and cost effective healthcare plan in this country by far.

Welfare saves babies lives. When it was “reformed” under the Clinton administration, the number of abortions in this country tripled. At less than one penny on the dollar of taxes, many think its worth it.

No Child left behind is a clusterf**k as is Medicare part D, because they were designed to forestall effective government action and policies, not actually fix a problem.

Tax money is necessary for infrastructure, and not just roads and bridges, but schools and police and fire protection, oh yeah, and the military. The purpose of government is not to save money but to spend it effectively. For the most part they do so. Want to really save some tax money, eliminate the military as it takes 60% of your income tax dollar.

So double bullshit, ever work at a big corporation? The waste, confusion, theft and simple stupidity is several orders of magnitude greater than in the public sector because executives know that no one is watching them.

[Bluesue]

When Bush first said he'd veto, he said it would encourage peple to leave private insurers. Now Mike Leavitt, Health & Human Services Secretary told USA Today Bush wants universal health care before he leaves office. Say what? Since when?

The Medicare drug program was a gift to big pharma and insurers. The administration was concerned companies would dump retiree drug coverage and put it on Medicare. So they created an $86 billion fund to bribe companies not to dump retirees.

Perhaps citizens should form a corporation so they can receive some of the republican largesse.

[magen]

Why can't republiCONmen admit that there's SOME things that are GOOD about government.

Putting the interests of HMO's, pharmacuetical companies, and health insurance agencies (profit not health) over the subsidized healthcare of American children.

Children have parents that VOTE ya know.

[LunaNik]

"Why can't republiCONmen admit that there's SOME things that are GOOD about government."

They do. They fully appreciate government's abilities to help them line their own pockets while depriving the rest of us of our basic rights. They think that's REALLY good.

[Camel54]

It really should be a requirement of any healthcare proposal that when you vote against it, you must sit face to face with the people being left out of it and explain to them why they need to take one for the team. They keep telling us it won't work. They keep insisting it is socialized medicine run amok as one commenter put it, but we've only tried it their way, and that has been an undeniable failure in terms of human suffering on an appalling scale.

To win this debate and move toward winning that larger debate, we must start repeating the phrase that President Bush has vowed to veto healthcare for children. Answer every question with it. Bring it up when no questions are asked. "General Petreaus? He's grown man who can handle criticism. What I'm concerned with, Wolf, is the children Bush has promised to veto healthcare for. Who is going to pass legislation to stop attacking them?"

[realitytrumpsbull]

Healthscam healthscare is just more Government
Doughnuts, socialized medicine run amok, if they
did more audits of the HMO's and chased down
the fraud etc., then there would be affordable
healthcare for all through well-managed hospitals. As it is, with doctors practically
sponsored by Pfizer to poison your relatives
while-u-wait through overmedication, 3-card-monte 'treatment' strategies and so forth,
the truth remains that checking into a hospital could be hazardous to your health. External
oversight is the best medicine for modern 'medicine', you don't need an MRI where
a band-aid will do....

[Herrington]

Not so realitytrumpsbull. Yes, an honest attempt to police policy with the aim of low cost quality product would be the answer, if it were possible. Given that private healthcare has "run amok" for thirty years now, you have to wonder when they are going to realize their survival depends on changing their ways. They won't.

So, either you have healthcare police or a government healthcare system.

No accounting is possible to the puported costs of healthcare because the highest costs have nothing to do with delivery of product, they have to do with mergers and aquisitions and huge unreported allocations of funds to the principles of "non-profit" corporations.
These practices will not bear the light of public scrutiny and are the reason that self regulation is not going to be a possibility, ever.

We have trusted private enterprise to create a healthcare system, which they did, and it is of high quality. Unfortunately that system has been taken over by unprincipled swine that need to be shown the door if not the jail cell.

[Ani]

I have seven kids (six living, one deceased). I'd like to know which of my remaining children the conservatives would like to have also die?

Which of my children would conservatives call out to suffer chronic, untreated illness?

Which of my children would conservatives name to be a carrier of a disease that is easily controlled by innoculations, but often unaffordable without insurance?

Well, you get my drift - I won't go on.

Just know -- We CAN and SHOULD do better than dooming 9 million of our children to poor health. For you keep-my-go­vernment-s­mall folks, an uninsured child who becomes sick costs our government a whole lot more money than a healthy child. Think about Medicare (which you probably despise as well). Still, think about it ... it has a small 2% overhead. Can you say the same for private insurers? Drug companies? Do you like paying those high premium, high deductible insurance rates?

Please think reasonably about it, everyone.

Have a good day,

Ani

[Herrington]

Ani,

I’m afraid that all of our children are expendable. Not at the hand of the Goldwater Republicans. Conservative means just that, conservative. Small government, big government, an issue of degrees and not of good and evil. The people that would sacrifice our children are the greedy, vain, and self indulgent to whom no conscience adheres.

There is a wickedness in this land the like of which I have had no prior experience outside what I imagine must be the norm in a high security prison for habitual thieves and murderers. It is as if the halls of government are reduced to a knife fight over a single cigarette where the one that has all the other cigarettes wants that last one that you might have. A class of vermin has risen to power that considers us as serfs, chattel, to be used and discarded when spent for the pleasure of one whose only right to do so lies in our willingness to let them do so.

Greed is the most cowardly of sins. It is pyschopathology born of the unreasoning fear of not having enough and knows no natural limits. Unless it is stopped, staunched by we who stand in horror of its extremes, it will ruin whatever it needs to in order to allay a fear that can’t be relieved. You can’t bargain with it, reason with it, or make peace with it. A man possessed by it is utterly indifferent to us and sees only what we have that he does not yet have.

This is the nature of the beast that has been among us for millennia. How he convinced us that he knew the secret to or would share prosperity confounds me every day. He is as uncaring as a spider and not as rational. He is the weakest and most cowardly of us all.

[hopeless277]

Conservatives have PROVEN themselves to be corrupt and inept. Iraq, Katrina, bridges, etc. So it all comes down to this: Conservatives are people who have never needed and never used government services. And the country is letting them determine government services. It's like letting a car salesman work on your car. Does he have a vested interest in keeping your car going or selling you a new one? Bush's vested interest is to provide as much money to those who favor him giving them more money as he can so they will give him some of that money. It would be illegal if we had a Department of Justice. Good for Bush that we don't. Anymore.

[LeftRight]

While your sentiment is correct, your terminology isn't. Conservatives are not the root problem. Neocons are. I've know many conservative people throughout my life, and all of them are good people, who actually care about making a difference, and even though we disagreed on many ideas, they were willing to listen to my ideas, and I to theirs. Now, my wife's sister's husband is a neocon. When I went home for Christmas back in 2005, right after the NSA spying story broke, I couldn't get him to listen to me, or admit that there was at least a possiblity of a major law being broken by the pres, so that we might need an investigation. He just kept insisting that there was no evidence that a law had been broken, so we should just ignore the whole damn thing. To this day he's convinced that we're better off with bushco(tm) in office, since "He's a Christian" in spite of all the evidence pointing the other way (forever war, vast debt, continuous deficits, loss of his own job, fact that his family was previously qualified for public assistance in the form of health care but is no longer covered, etc...)

[Ani]

LeftRight ... Thanks for your post. You've just taught me a little terminology lesson that is quite valuable.

Yes. A little conservatism is not so bad. A little neo-conism is deadly.

I stand corrected for a separate post I just made in response to this subject, in which I addressed my comments to conservatives, when I should have spoken to our neo-cons.

Yours humbly,

Ani

[ihavenobias]

Well, then what do you call Reagan's brand of conservatism which was just as bad, economically speaking, as the current administration (if not worse)?

[TheOtherMaven]

Well, DUH! It's about time someone came up with THIS paradigm!

We've had bad government - horrible, stupid, incompetent government - since at least 2000. Now, how do we get back to having good government? Is it even possible?

[demockracy]

Calling for smaller government, regardless, is exactly as sensible as calling for smaller shoes, regardless of the feet.

[drkazmd65]

Well put demockracy.

[Stevelagain]

Say "no" to stealth left wing socialist health care plans.

If you want to force big momma government health care down our throats then at least be decent enough to NOT HIDE BEHIND CHILDREN.

Instead, I suggest we have a real debate and national discussion about what to do with health care. Stop spinning, stop hiding behind "the little children" and form committees in congress to work on a national health care plan.

Lets get both parties involved. Lets talk to patients, doctors, nurses, hospitals, lawyers, insurance companies, academics, and lets take a hard look at what is FAILING in other countries and take a hard look at what is WORKING for America....then come up with a national plan that keeps what's working...­.working..­.avoides the failures of big momma health care in other nations...and lets do the hard thing. Lets create a UNIQUE American plan that works.

And hey, about stopping massive democratic party spending and get some balanced budgets going? And how about FIXING social security and Medicare. If you are going to help bust the budget with a new big momma give away....you should first fix the big government programs that are in serious trouble.