Say "Yes" to Kids & "No" to Bush

What is more basic than providing health care for children? Nothing, you might think. Yet, in America today, 9 million children live without health insurance. Nearly 70 percent of the children without health insurance have at least one parent who is employed. This is just not right. In a country that spends more per capita on health care than any other nation in the world, to leave so many families without access to health care for their kids is worse than bad social policy. It is morally indefensible.

Before Congress left town earlier this month, they threw a lifeline to those families. Both the House and the Senate voted to extend the State Children's Health Insurance Program (S-CHIP), a vitally important federal effort to provide health insurance to families when their income level is so low that they cannot afford private health insurance. But now President Bush is promising a veto.

Basically, S-CHIP provides a safety net for low-income families to ensure that their kids get medical care when they need it. It is cost effective and the right thing to do. What kind of country would we be if we kept any medical care from a child simply because of the size of their parents' paychecks? S-CHIP provides the coverage that allows a family to see a doctor or get preventive care, rather than the far more expensive option of going to an emergency room for their primary health care needs.

Many states have different names for these programs, from KidCare to HealthStart to Child Health Plus. But in each state, regardless of its name, the programs provide poor working families with the kind of medical care that Medicare provides for seniors. More than 3 million American children are currently covered, and both houses of Congress support expanding the coverage to more children. The nation's governors are in favor and so are groups ranging from the Children's Defense Fund to the Catholic Health Association of the United States. Recent polls suggest that nine out of ten Americans support the program. They know it makes sense.

Funding for the plan hasn't kept up with the rising costs of health care. Under a proposal the president supports, S-CHIP funding would stay flat. Given the rate of health care inflation, flat funding means that many children currently enrolled will be forced out and access will be closed to all the other kids who should be covered. We should be expanding the number of children who are in these programs. The president is cutting them instead. We want to cover kids. He wants to cut them off.

The House of Representatives voted $47 billion in new spending on the program to cover 5 million more poor kids in America. While the Senate bill provides $35 billion, it covers 2 million fewer children. The House bill is better, of course, because it covers more kids. The House bill has an added bonus. It offsets the additional costs by cutting a wrong-headed Medicare privatization scheme that was set up to give profiteering insurance companies more of the dollars we're spending on senior health care. That give-away to the insurance industry costs taxpayers $1,000 more per beneficiary each year than traditional Medicare does. So the House protects seniors, kids and taxpayers, all at the same time.

Now is the time to let your senators and representative know that you firmly support the House proposal and oppose any effort to curtail the access of poor kids to quality and cost-effective health care. If George W. Bush and the insurance industry win this battle, millions of kids will have no health coverage. We face a stark choice: Will we stand for the needs of our kids or will we allow President Bush to veto their access to health care? Will you take action today?