Bush Republicans Deny Children Health Insurance
By
CNN reports “House Democrats on Thursday failed to override President Bush’s veto of a children’s health insurance bill that opponents said was too expensive.
By a vote of 273 to 156, the measure fell 13 votes short of the two-thirds majority needed for an override. Forty-four Republicans voted for the override.
The issue has ignited an intense two-week struggle on Capitol Hill after Bush vetoed the proposed five-year expansion and $35 billion spending increase. Bush proposes increasing the program by $5 billion.
Before the vote, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi spoke of a middle-class family caring for a child with a birth defect, asking lawmakers: “So when the president wants to have 4 or $5 billion for children in this initiative, is he the one, the decider, who wants to go to that family and say, ‘Your child is out’?”
“We’re lobbying for all of the children,” said the California Democrat…”
Read the rest of the article.
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And the Bush Years go on…
18 Comments
October 19th, 2007 at 9:32 am
Pelosi is lobbying for socialism, not children. I wish we would quit beating around the bush and be honest about this healthcare debate. Democrats want national, socialized healthcare. And that’s fine. If we, as a country, decide that we want European style socialism, and want high tax rates and want the state to provide everything for us, fair enough. But be honest. Calling it anything other than socialism is false and unfair to the people that it will effect. Personally, I’m against socialized healthcare, but I’m a reasonable person, so I’m willing to listen to all sides of the debate as long as all sides of the debate are willing to be honest about what their ideas represent and the ramifications.
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October 19th, 2007 at 9:35 am
Swole, i believe you are misinformed about SCHIP and the push for “socialized” medicine.
A blog post from Shuler shows the clearest refutation of the misinformation being pushed by the Bush administration. I’m not sure why this argument wasn’t made more forcefully BEFORE the over-ride vote, but check it out:
http://miva.citizen-times.com/cgi-bin/miva?blogs+action=single&entryid=1192738198&blog_id=hshuler
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October 19th, 2007 at 9:57 am
CBS:
I guess they’re all a bunch of socialists, Swole.
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October 19th, 2007 at 10:34 am
I’d like to think I could believe that the government would actually start fazing out adults who are receiving benefits from a program intended for children. Unfortunately, I do not have enough faith in government. My apologies for being so cynical, but show me one thing that government does well?
How did adults manage to get in on this SCHIP program in the first place?
This program does nothing to reduce healthcare costs. This program would do nothing more than subsidize the high costs of healthcare. Personally, I think we need to be focusing on how to make healthcare less costly.
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October 19th, 2007 at 10:41 am
Show me the adults, Swole. Sounds like misinformation to me. Kind of like the Republicans on the House floor who are trying to convince people that SCHIP covers illegal immigrants.
It covers poor kids and families that can’t afford insurance or who are denied insurance.
Got a problem with that? What’s your solution?
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October 19th, 2007 at 10:45 am
Mob rule at its finest.
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October 19th, 2007 at 10:55 am
Swole, I agree with you about Healthcare costs. I think we also have to do something about actual Health. We essentially have a disease-care system. An epidemic of preventable chronic health problems are driving up costs in the system.
I don’t have an answer for the Health problem, but certainly healthcare and preventative care for all children is a good start.
If the market cannot provide a solution for uninsured and underinsured children and the poor, then I think we have no choice put to come up with government solutions. In fact, I believe that to be in everyone’s own enlightened self-interest.
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October 19th, 2007 at 11:01 am
I would suggest a modest proposal. Its a win win really.
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October 19th, 2007 at 11:15 am
Adults are in fact being covered by SCHIP. I can’t seem to find an official justification for it, but while the Republicans were in charge of Congress, the Republican President began encouraging states to extend SCHIP coverage to adults. Bush’s administration had to sign waivers in order for them to extend the coverage, which was done and is still being done.
According to the Government Accountability Office, Arkansas, Arizona, Colorado, Idaho, Illinois, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, Oregon, Rhode Island, Virginia and Wisconsin have received federal waivers to expand SCHIP coverage to adults.
I don’t have a problem with that. I do wonder why Bush didn’t just stop issuing waivers to states instead of vetoing the bill and claiming to be concerned about adult coverage.
I think that Bush’s claim that the veto is the only thing that keeps him relevant is much closer to the truth than the crap they’re peddling. Unfortunately it’s the neediest kids that suffer.
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October 19th, 2007 at 11:47 am
Huh. Thanks Zombie.
Is this an 18-21 thing?
Looks like we need to cover all sorts of uninsured people.
Swole, I had that wrong. My bad.
Swole, mob rule is also known as democracy.
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October 19th, 2007 at 11:53 am
Gordon,
I agree that GOPers bringing illegal immigration into this debate is ludicrous. Just as ludicrous as the dems brining an actual child into this debate. Both sides are trying to win the argument by demagoguing the other side. These aren’t my words, but I think they sum up the situation pretty well:
“It strikes me that the advocates of expanding SCHIP, the Federal program that covers children, have successfully framed the issue as if the children were all orphans. This ought to go down as one of history’s finest achievements in demagoguery.”
Personally, my sentiments regarding SCHIP are expressed Here.
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October 19th, 2007 at 12:21 pm
Fortunately, this is a constitutional republic.
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October 19th, 2007 at 12:21 pm
And vice versa.
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October 19th, 2007 at 12:31 pm
commit a crime get a free lawyer.
get sick and can’t afford health insurance, you’re screwed.
$600 billion and climbing for the war on terror, and we can’t expand health coverage for children in america?
watching your sick relative suffer or die from lack of medical care isn’t terror?
please…
i work 55-60 hours a week, 12 months a year, and i can barely afford my families’ health care; and I make almost double the median income of most americans.
corporate bailouts to the tune of billions are not considered socialist capitilism, but taking care of our fellow americans is?
wtf
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October 19th, 2007 at 12:34 pm
I think that SCHIP was so popular because it was so successful in providing coverage for children.
The states began to see that they could save massive amounts of money that was being defaulted on medical bills if they could extend the same coverage to needy adults.
Wisconsin already had a program to insure needy children, so they wanted their portion of SCHIP funding to be used to cover adults. They also argued that more children would be brought into the program if their parents were covered as well. This required a waiver from the administration. Bush was quite happy to do this. In fact Wisconsin (which had a previous waiver) wanted to continue to extend these benefits to adults and on May 20th of this year the Bush administration renewed their waiver allowing them to do so.
This is more fake republican outrage. If the government didn’t want adults to be covered, all they had to do was refuse to waive the age requirement.
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October 19th, 2007 at 1:24 pm
SCHIP has been used for years to show the supposedly compassionate face of modern conservatism. It has been lauded and supported by such Marxists as Chuck Grassley & Orrin Hatch. Also, our socialist president George W. Bush not only praised the program to high heavens, he promised to expand SCHIP if he was reelected.
Swole’s Lament doesn’t know how SCHIP came to be, or why adults are being covered, or even how any of this works, yet s/he knows that covering sick kids with a successful and popular program created and supported by both Republicans and Democrats including W is in fact a commie plot to turn us into France or something.
The republicans pulled this “socialized medicine” label out of their asses in order to cover for their greed and their refusal to confront their President on anything, but I’m a reasonable person, so I’m willing to listen to all sides of the debate as long as all sides of the debate are willing to be honest about what their ideas represent and the ramifications.
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October 19th, 2007 at 2:07 pm
Uptown and Zombie have it exactly right.
“our socialist President”
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October 19th, 2007 at 3:47 pm
Swole writes: show me one thing that government does well
well let see,
- Social Security (of cause republicans are trying to destroy that, see my post on Brainshrub.com on Monday)
- infrastructure, u know streets etc.
- law enforcement, thanks to government run police I feel safe to leave my house
- education, without public schools only rich people would get get schooling
- the arts, I like museums etc.
now of cause the current administration is trying their best to proof that government does not work by screwing everything up on purpose (Katrina, Iraq, etc.) for they believe that the rich should rule the world.
Here is an idea: if you do not believe in government you should not be allowed to be in it!
Asheman writes: If the market cannot provide a solution …
… of cause the market can provide solutions, but at what cost? Just today a good friend of mine had his health care cost increased by 19.5%.(from $ 1,002/month to $1,998/month for a family of 3) Not because he used it or anything, just because they can. If we are left to the greed of corporations most of us will soon find themselves living in extreme poverty. Remember the feudal system? Let the free market rule? UMBOOYFM!
And by the way, having grown up in Germany in a socialized capitalistic society I can tell you that the average person has a higher standard of living in Germany despite the taxes, because we get things for our taxes, like Health Care, Education, affordable living,
vacation (like 6+ weeks), etc.
Here is an idea: if you never experienced socialized capitalism go live in it for a while before you criticize it, u know get first hand experience, otherwise you are just like a virgin having an opinion on the best intercourse position. Yeah I can learn a lot from u.
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