07.25.07

GOP Continues To Go After Poor Children

Posted in Around The Nation, Health Care, Privatization, The Budget at 4:24 pm by wcnews

Check this out from No Shelter from the Storm: Amerrica’s Uninsured Children.

The Number of Uninsured Children

• There were more than 9 million uninsured children (ages 0-18 years) in the U.S. in 2005. One out of every nine children is uninsured.
• One out of every five uninsured people is a child.
• The five states with the largest number of uninsured children are California (1,368,999), Texas (1,366,638), Florida (718,603), New York (441,434), and Illinois (376,332). Together, the uninsured children in these five states account for nearly half of all uninsured children in the country.
• The five states with the highest rates of uninsured children are Texas (20.4 percent), Florida (17.0 percent), New Mexico (16.7 percent), Nevada (16.4 percent), and Montana (16.2 percent).

There’s a bipartisan effort afoot in Congress to try and insure more uninsured children. Of course President Bush, and enough members of Congress to prevent a veto override, are against it. Therefore holding up bringing what the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP) says, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimates, will bring health care to 5.1 million of those 9 million uninsured children. If anything is a no-brainer, and the right thing to do, it’s making sure ALL children have insurance. Cutting it in half is a good first step.

So why are Bush and his minions against this and why do they make dubious claims about this bill. This post at Fire Dog Lake, Now the Republicans Are Obstructing Children’s Health Care, leaves no doubt.

Despite bipartisan support in both houses for significant expansion of SCHIP, the Republican leadership has decided to block any major expansion and to support President Bush’s threatened veto [h/t Jane]. And why are they against expanding a successful children’s health program, especially when solving the problem of uninsured/uncovered Americans is high on the public’s wish list? The answers reveal today’s Republicans at their hypocritical worst.

Partly it’s because this is the opening skirmish in the looming battle over the structure of health care reform. You see, if access to SCHIP’s pooled funding mechanism is expanded, so that more Americans can choose it, then Republicans fear Americans who have a choice between the tax-funded pool and private insurance plans that are more expensive (unless subsidized) will choose the tax-funded pool approach — just like a single payer system. That solution costs less, but the private insurers lose business. So the Republican game is to preclude as many people as they can from having this choice by limiting access to the pooled approach, and then pushing people into private insurance plans through direct subsidies, tax credit incentives or simply denying Americans any other choice.

We’ve already heard the President, who claims anyone can get universal health care just by showing up at an emergency room, attack the SCHIP expansion as favoring a “government run” program. McConnell and Boehner are now labeling the concept as “Hillary Care,” echoing the completely stupid claims by Mitt Romney that Senator Clinton’s approach (which she hasn’t announced) is essentially Marxist. It’s the beginning of the debate over “socialized medicine,” just as Moore’s SiCKO predicted.

Ah yes. If it’s proven that the government can insure children for cheaper than the private sector than everyone will want that less expensive health care and there will be anarchy. Here’s that despicable quote mentioned above from President Bush:

“People have access to health care in America,” he told an audience in Cleveland. “After all, you just go to an emergency room.”

It’s truly despicable what they will do for their political paymasters and what they won’t do for the least of their brothers.

By the way, Texas is first in the nation in teen birth rate. The new head of the SBOE is quoted in the article:

He said he’s concerned that Texas’ sex education curriculum focuses too much on abstinence and provides too little information on other ways to prevent pregnancies.

A 1995 law requires school districts to emphasize abstinence in sex education classes.

“It’s a touchy subject,” Sanborn said. “We can preach abstinence quite a bit, and there is nothing wrong with that, but it doesn’t affect some kids, and apparently it’s really not working in Texas.”

State Board of Education President Don McLeroy, of Bryan, said sex education is primarily a local issue. Although the state emphasizes the teaching of abstinence, the law requires each district to have a local committee that decides what will be taught.

“The idea that just giving them a lot of information is going to solve it, I think, is kind of naive,” he said. “Certainly, it’s more of a societal problem than it is a school problem.”

Of course, don’t educate them, aka give them information, that would be naive. You can read more about him here and here.

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