The United States Congress just passed the re-authorization (through 2013) of the State Health Insurance Program (SCHIP), which will maintain insurance coverage for more than 7 million children in working families. The program will also extend coverage to an addition 4 million kids.
Here’s Rep. John Yarmuth’s floor speech in support of the expansion:
Modern medicine can prevent an inconvenient infection from ballooning into a debilitating illness with a relatively simple physician’s visit and subsequent treatment. And here in America, with the best medical practices and practitioners in the history of the world, we have the capabilities to keep our nation’s children healthy and their futures bright.
But we aren’t doing it.
Up to now, we’ve chosen not to guarantee the health of our children, instead forcing upon millions of parents the difficult choice of seeking treatment for an ailing child or buying food. Making that potentially life-saving doctor’s visit or keeping the lights on.
Today, we have the opportunity to erase that awful dilemma for the working mothers and fathers of more than 4 million children, including tens of thousands in my home state of Kentucky, by extending the State Children’s Health Insurance Program. By supporting the SCHIP expansion we help guarantee the inalienable rights of America’s children to survive, thrive, and grow up to become healthy adults.
By expanding SCHIP we can prevent the future health problems of our youngest generation so that they never grow up to be burdens on the system. It makes economic sense, but more importantly, it is our moral obligation. I urge my colleagues to join me in supporting this important legislation, as we fight to ensure that a sick child in this great nation never has to go without care.
7 responses so far ↓
1 E // Jan 14, 2009 at 4:07 pm
We’re going to need them to survive and thrive…so they can work long and hard to pay for all of the government spending that’s been out of control and being rolled into debt for the last 50+years.
What about our moral obligation to NOT pass on massive prosperity smothering debt to future generations ?
2 Novena // Jan 14, 2009 at 4:34 pm
“What Will Jim & Mitch Do?”
Glad to hear the good news on SCHIP. As it goes to the US Senate, it will be interesting to see how Bunning the Brainless and McConnell the Merchant of Pork vote. Children’s heatlh issues have never kept them up at night. In 2007, those two stalwarts of the US oligarchy voted “no.” Even so, it passed 67-29. It should pass even more easily now.
3 Charlie // Jan 14, 2009 at 6:40 pm
Yarmuth may have made a speech but he is a minor player in this. That legislation is based on a declining source of revenue, and Congress will be back for more revenue soon. Watch your billfolds.
4 jake // Jan 14, 2009 at 6:42 pm
Minor player?
Back that claim up, holmes.
5 Hillary // Jan 14, 2009 at 10:19 pm
E: Are you advocating we allow America’s poorest, most underprivileged children sink further into disease and death to save our national budget? Hmmmmmm…Saving lives or saving money?
6 E // Jan 14, 2009 at 11:56 pm
Wow…Hill…
Did I at any point make the case for children to “sink further into disease and death”?
Nope, I went back and re-read my post…nothing about advocating desease and death. Nice try at killing the messenger though.
By the way Hill, the biggest problem with SCHIP is not funding. It’s the fact that the “S” stands for ‘State’….as in government.
From what I can gather the main reason that so many kids that are eligible yet uninsured is not funding, it’s that the states suck royally at implimentation.
Try this little snippet from Georgetown University Health Policy Institute, Center for Children and Families (2008);
[About Eligible but Uninsured Children
Despite the marked progress in states, almost 70 percent of all uninsured children (some
six million) are eligible but not enrolled in Medicaid and SCHIP. This is due to many
factors including complicated enrollment and retention procedures that make it hard for
families to enroll, or once enrolled, to keep their coverage. In addition, families still may
not know about the coverage available for their children.]
…Say it aint so! The government sucks at implimentation and disemination of information…the horror!
Sounds to me like the boys in DC just threw more money at a program that is currently under-utilized and bogged down in state level beauracratic bullshit . I have to wonder why the boys in DC think that somehow, if they allocate even more borrowed funds to SCHIP that the states are just going to magically do a better job at enrolling people. I guess they figure if they throw enough of our money around…they might actually hit on something every once in a while. Either that, or they figure that come next election cycle it’ll sound really good in one of their commercials.
But what the hell…allocating yet more borrowed money to SCHIP sounds magnanimous nonetheless. The dirty little secret is…that the very people it is designed to help are the ones that are going to be crushed by the high taxes and inflation that will result from reckelss government fiscal policy, as inflation and taxes always hit the poor much harder.
7 E // Jan 16, 2009 at 6:50 am
By the way Hill…
Our national budget is way beyond being saved, all we can hope to do now is to reduce the smell from it’s rotting corpse.
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