A link to CNN's article discussing President Bush's Veto of the SCHIP reform
CNN Article
Summary of Facts:
President Bush vetoed the proposed SCHIP reform. The legislation was passed by the House with a margin of 265-159 and by the Senate with a vote of 67-29. The senate majority was large enough to overturn the veto, but the house needs an additional 15 votes to swing for the legislation for the veto to be over turned.
The legistlation would have increased the annual budget of $5 billion to $12 billion for the next 5 years. of the SCHIP program significantly. It would have doubled the number of insured children from 4 million to 8 million
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5 comments:
As someone who deals with SCHIP every day, I am not surprised with the VETO. I am the director of government affairs for one of the most urban hospital systems in the country. I actually think that this veto was not a bad thing because the bill that was sent to the president's desk was a bad bill.
It is important to extend SCHIP. But SCHIP is not the answer to the issue of the uninsured. If the current bill were signed, it would mean that a family of 4 making close to $75,000 a year in NJ could get public health-care funding. An expansion like this is irresponsible. The bill needs to be much more focused on CHILDREN and less on parents and adults. By putting the focus back on children, it forces the market to provide health-care coverage.
As an employer, if I knew that I didn't have to provide coverage for employees who made less than $75K, I would pull their coverage. The President's call for only a 5% increase still forces business to be responsible.
While many people believe that a socialized medicine program like this is the best way to go, working with people who live with SCHIP everyday, you can see that preventive medicine is not a part of their lives.
As someone who works in hospitals it would be great to get "more" people covered, but this is just political theatre. The real issue of the uninsured is the undocumented. This is the subset of the population that is using healthcare resources.
SCHIP will get funded. The expansion will be somewhere in the neighborhood of 7%.
Anon- I enjoyed your insights. Thank you for posting them.
As someone who works for a social service organization in a poor ubran city, I deal with people every day who are struggling to make ends meet. While the vast majority of our clients make nowhere near $75,000 a year, I don't think that a family of four with that income would exactly be getting over on the government for getting public health care funding. The cost of living is rapidly increasing, certainly more rapidly than income. The story of the woman who had to file for bankruptcy is hardly uncommon. Add to the co-pays for a simple ER all of the uncovered, hidden fees that someone may be hit with, such as a doctor who bills separately, may be more than a family can afford, causing a spiraling effect on their credit, which will affect them for years to come. True health care reform will occur only when access to quality health care - like access to fire protection, police protection, and elementary and secondary education — is not viewed as a commodity, a product that is available only to those who can afford it.
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