If You Can't Save Children's Health, Then Save Your Breath

Personally, I don't want to hear from any politician or presidential candidate who isn't serious this time. Children in need are neglected left and right in this country. And President Bush's veto is just the latest in a litany of letdowns for the most vulnerable among us.

Did you know that the state a child lives in determines whether he or she will be adequately protected from abuse and neglect? Have you seen the Report Card that ranks your state? And are you satisfied that were a child to simply move over the border to a neighboring state that move, within an abusive home, could ensure life or sentence him to death?

So Democratic Senator/Congressman/presidential hopeful don't talk to us about what you intend to do? Don't wave a finger at George W. Bush and tell him he isn't running things now, that his veto is heartless, unless you intend to back that up. And if you're a Republican who cares about children, don't give us some mumbo jumbo about socialized medicine while children die on your watch. We owe no allegiance to such deceptive rhetoric. We owe it to who our forebears in their wisdom expected us to be, what they risked and gave their lives for, and what the world thought we were.

Show some fortitude this time. Children should bring out the best in us. Millions await your courage to protect them from preventable, often irreversible illnesses. They are the single most important reason to step beyond pettiness and pernicious politics to make things better. So don't give us any more gibberish. Forget the promises. We want action this time.

Step out beyond the beltway and look into these children's eyes. That's where you'll find your calling unless you're on the wrong road blocking the way of people who can make all the difference. And if that's the case, we'd be much obliged if you'd stop puffing blue smoke, telling us what you intend to do and simply step aside.

Comments

[swkidder]

Bravo ... It really is time to start telling the truth. No more waffling, parsing, or "bi-partisan compromise" when what's at stake is too important.
Fix the healthcare system - is anyone other than Dennis Kucinich willing to tell the truth about the need to fire private insurance companies?
Bring the troops home from the middle of the civil war we started.
Initiate public funding of elections - the only thing that will break the vicious dependence in our legislature on corporate money. And, while you're at it, let's be "originalists" and address corporate personhood, (re)defining it as our founders did.
And also while we're at it, we might want to think about the fact that it's not really the planet that's at risk, but the human race. The planet would be here well after we're gone. Perhaps we should begin to think about global warming as THE issue that affects our own survival as a species?
Time for truth telling all around ....

[lottopol]

The truth is that whether we adopt a single-buyer system like Germany or France that uses private insurance companies, or a nation health system like England and Canada that doesn't we will eventually have to address the problem that every other industrialized country has. Basically if left to a free-market evetually doctors will take an ever increasing share of national income. The 47 million uninsured are a feeble attempt to keep medical care from grwing even more as a share of national income (already the USA is more than double what Canada, France, England and Germany spend on a per capita basis.
The insurance companies are only intermediaries, either we will use some type of monoposony (single-buyer) to limit doctors incomes (already triple any other country in the world) or medical care will continue to grow as a percent of our income.

[melanie11]

Yes!
Enough of blowhards.
They will turn America into a third world country.
There is NO excuse.

[snakepliskin]

Look! I think everyone would agree that children of our country should have access to both preventitive and active healthcare at prices they can afford, and yes, sometimes this means free. The problem is that the SCHIP bill was not authorized for this purupose. It was designed for the most needy. Poverty kids. If you Libs want healthcare for children then present a bill outlining healthcare for children and include all needy children. The problem with the democrats attempt with the SCHIP bill is that they want to slip a behind the scenes change to existing legislation (renewal)rather than presenting a new bill and letting it stand on its own. If I remember correctly this is still a republic and the citizens and their representatives should have the opportunity to vote up or down on healthcare for children.

[deminmo]

The White House and a lot of Governors are cutting away at government funded health programs. That includes SCHIP, medicare, and Medicaid.

The Republicans blame the Democrats for wanting to "spend & Tax", keeping these programs funded.
The Republicans seem to be saying if you want
health care for yourself and your children, then get two jobs to afford it. They don't take
into account a lot of "working poor" just don't make enough for housing, food ect. and private pay health care. That completely leaves out disabled, and elderly. In fact I have heard it said on talk radio that there is no real poverty
in the USA, only lazy people.
Until we start to look at why medicines, doctor
visits, and hospital costs climb every year, why
insurance providers sometimes try to get away with double charging doctors, then I don't think
we have any hope of getting a workable system.

And yes, I do know from a family member, there is fraud in the insurance system.

[Ethel]

Children in the US have been treated like a by product of human coppulation, not a treasured new member of our society.
Some people feel passionately about the unborn foetus... the form that is unviable if not supported in the mother's womb, but fail to care about the child after it is born. Apparently it is totally on it's own...subject to whatever happens to it health wise or family wise or at the schools that offer environmental exporsures of Formaldehyde, Volatile Organic Compounds from cheap or deteriorating furnishings within their classrooms and no fresh air.
If our children had health care, maybe the true cause of low test scores would be revealed.
Is the Bush Machine afraid that the truth might put some restrictions on his corporate chemical buddies who do as they please with the increasingly limited restrictions on toxic exposures he's made happen during his administration?
Our kids are our future. We know that what happens to us in childhood has serious effects on the entire life of the person. At what cost do we ignore health care for our most vulnerable population?

[Archie1955]

When the month is up and millions of children can no longer receive medical help some of them tragically will die. They will die because the incompetent heartless head of the U.S. government made certain they would along with his venal GOP supporters in Congress (just how much money were his supporters paid by the insurance lobby to kill American children)?

[BoulderSue]

Archie, I am with you all the way, but as usual the Prez and his minions are not planning ahead: All those sick/and/or dying kids won't be available for cannon fodder. What a waste!

[deminmo]

Amen, Archie1955.

[snakepliskin]

When is it the responsibility of the Feds to provide health insurance for its citizens? Becasue the feds do not provide Birth Control is it their fault women have to pay for abortions? Or what about this, should the government supply Stop smoking devices and if they dont is it there responsibility for all the smoking deaths? Your premise is true, however, that logic leads us down the path that the feds are responsible for everything in our life. I don't think you want that, do you? Its tragic Kids get sick and die. However, I do not think its the Feds problem. Try talking to your state, our state provides full healthcare to all children.

CIndy Sheehan and Jay Revarra sing along tonite at 10:00 pm.

[PresidentLindsay]

This isn't rocket science. The USA spends twice as much money per capita on health care as the countries that already enjoy socialized medicine. Yet we have tens of millions uninsured and tens of millions more underinsured. Meanwhile the demagogues keep up the scare tactic that convinces the stupidest among us that the socialism boogeyman will kill them in their beds. Can you imagine what sort of incredible socialized medicine system we could have in this country if we continued to spend twice as much per capita as all those other countries? In other words, oh ye mentally challenged, without spending one dime more than we already spend we could have the ultimate health care system. But no, we've got troglodytes still bamboozled into thinking that socialized medicine means Lenin will attack them in their sleep. It's morons like these (several posting here about the $82,000 lie that Bush was spouting) who make me think that democracy is a failed experiment in this country.

[joebaggadonuts]

It's nice to see some fire from you Kathleen! Thanks and right on!

[jchip98]

It appears the only time the great 'Decider' decides to become a fiscal conservative is when the Government might have to step in with a affordable health insurance program for the poor.The 'Decider' has no problem spending 500 BILLION for a war we should never have started.

[Amberlass]

Amen.

[ClemTheMisanthrope]

Chip, chip, chip is how a woodcarver turns a log into a sculpture. SCHIP, SCHIP, SCHIP is how the "progressives" a/k/a left wing, turn health-care socialist. You're got the elderly, the poor and soon almost all the kids. Hillary learned the lesson in 1993 about doing it all at once, so now they just keep SCHIPing away. Few would object to giving a helping hand to poor children. But children of families earning up to $83,500? For one of the few times since taking office, George W Bush vetoed a bill. The cynical reality of this bill was so obvious that it even penetrated his "gotta spend, gotta spend" skull. GOD SAVE THE REPUBLIC!

[ShockedSHOCKED]

So, I guess that ClemTheMisanthrope thinks that Orin Hatch (who more or less designed the SCHIP legislation) is a closet socialist. And he justifies doing so using that now discredited claim that families with incomes up to $83,500 will qualify. Good Grief! This is a serious issue and it needs serious discussion - not a repeat of W's lies.

[Trittydi]

Someone needs to launch a SERIOUS campaign to call for congress to FORFEIT their taxpayer funded health care plan - unless this bill can be passed.

The only way I can see to make Congress worry about anyone else - much less children - is to have them put something personally at stake.

Congress has it too comfy for my liking - they are FAR too removed from the pain of ordinary Americans.

For example - letting legislation like NAFTA go through they give themselves pay raise after pay raise after pay raise while they fly around first class ignoring the "giant sucking sound" of American jobs leaving the country.

Their own reality need a tremendous "THWACK" from a constituent wielded two by four.
*

[Sagebush]

This veto is an outrage. I think in every national poll at least 70% of the public was for this legislation.

We, the people need to fight back. Everyone who is for this legislation should send many letters or emails to their senators and congressman demanding that they vote to override this veto, or they will lose your vote (if they ever had it.)

I hope that someone in Washington will organize a protest to be held on the day that the house votes on this override. I believe that the senate has the votes to override, but the house does not. Maybe people can make a difference. We should surely try. It's supposed to be our country, isn't it?

[Amberlass]

What needs to happen is that Congress should have their pensions taken away, and have social security like everyone else. I'll bet fixing social security would get fixed in a hurry. The same goes for their health care.

[deminmo]

In 2010 a big influx of people will want to collect on their Social Security and be covered on
Medicare.

Today the only thing there are a bunch of IOU's because the money has been pulled for things like,
funding the war.

[Susanholmes]

This is a great post, Kathleen. I couldn't have put it better myself.

[coloneblog]

Isn't it something that our conservative, right wing Republican leaders are so anti American people. They're willing to waste 100's of billions on a fraudulent, needless war; spend $600 billion+ a year on the World's most expensive military [mind you one that can't even beat a 3rd World insurgency], can't resolve illegal immigration, outsourcing good paying American jobs, allowing companies to jettison their pension responsibilities, health care, leave people dangling with predatory home loans, allow utility costs to skyrocket, can't protect our food supply or consumer products; along with other anti American people measures. Get'm out!!

[weslenforever]

Just a few minutes ago there was a caller to c-span who could be the poster child for the GOP.
She said "The democrats are all alike. They don't care about murdering the unborn babies left and right, but they care SO MUCH about them AFTER they're born."
Unfortunately, she didn't realize how ludicrous and ignorant she is. The GOP cares SO MUCH about the unborn who are aborted, but those who are born, and are HERE, mean squat to them. They don't care if they are abused, beaten, murdered, raped, molested, sick, disabled or anything else.
They CUT pay to doctors who treat medicaid patients, they CUT food stamps, they whine about every penny spent on poor children, but they insist they BE BORN even into misery. Some of them, most in congress, earn a million dollars a year, 9794 percent above the poverty line, and SCREAM that someone 300 percent above MIGHT get a little help with health care for THEIR children. They ALL DISGUST ME.

[Trittydi]

Love the fetus - hate the child.

CLASSIC repiglican.
*

[splashy]

They actually DON'T care about the unborn.

What they care about is punishing women for having sex, and forcing them to bear children whether it hurts them on not. It's part of their hatred of women, but they have to wrap it in the supposed "love of the fetus" they drone on and on about.

They are sadists that like to have women as victims.

That is why they really DON'T care about the child after it is born. It's NOT about the fetus or child.

[gardenbookie]

It matters not which policital party holds the keys to the chambers of congress, nor the oval office. It matters wholly on the integrity, compassion, intelligence, knowledge and ability to look beyond those closed doors and see what is really going on outside. Partisan selection has nothing to do with being a good leader. Being a good leader is about doing the right thing.

"The Democrats took the majority of the Congress last fall. When are they going to find it convenient to remember that they are supposed to serve "We the people"? (Melinda-above).

When are "We the People" going to start firing the self-serving jerks that "We the People" elected to do a job for "All the People"?