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By John J. Sweeney and Mike Cerbo

The single most compelling reason to expand the State Children’s Health Insurance Program is also the simplest: It’s the right thing to do. In America, every child should have a fair shot at growing up to be an astronaut, a ballet dancer, a firefighter or president. No child should be forced to give up these dreams because of health problems that could be managed or even prevented with proper care. In America, every child should have health care.

If that’s not a good enough reason to vote to override President Bush’s veto of full funding for children’s health, there’s also a powerful fiscal argument. Prevention makes good economic sense. In today’s twisted health care marketplace, it’s about the only thing that does.

So, it is hard to fathom why Bush vetoed legislation that would retain health coverage for the nearly 6 million children already enrolled in SCHIP — including nearly 50,000 in Colorado — and expand coverage to millions more.

At most, Bush says he will sign legislation that contains not a penny more than the existing level of funding for children’s health insurance.

At today’s level, some children who have health care through SCHIP would lose their insurance, and none of the remaining 180,000 uninsured kids in Colorado would get covered.

Bush’s veto comes at a time when fewer and fewer employers are offering health coverage to their workers, and increasingly those who are offered health insurance at work can’t afford to buy it. A recent study by the Kaiser Family Foundation shows that health insurance premiums rose at nearly double the rise in either workers’ wages or inflation.

There are virtually no reasonable policy arguments for not extending coverage to families like these. SCHIP has been a success.

The health status of those enrolled in the program has improved. That fact has implications any fiscal conservative should appreciate. Children with coverage are having fewer asthma attacks and therefore winding up in expensive emergency rooms a lot less. No surprise there. Prevention works.

Studies have even shown that children enrolled in SCHIP saw a notable improvement in school performance and attendance. As the president who promised to “leave no child behind,” Bush knows that for education to make a difference in the life of a child, that child has to be healthy enough to show up for school and pay attention. An educated work force is vital to today’s information economy.

The economic list goes on. Medical costs are responsible for as many as half the 1 million or so personal bankruptcies filed each year.

Businesses lose productivity when working parents have to stay home with sick kids. Today’s unhealthy child is, without intervention, tomorrow’s chronic-disease patient.

These fiscal realities beg the question of why Bush chose to veto health care for children while millions of working families live one broken bone or asthma attack away from financial ruin or worse. The fact that children’s health care is a good investment for the country should fit right in with his ideology. Perhaps he is concerned about the impact SCHIP will have on insurance company CEOs, who might lose a few million dollars.

If that’s the case, it’s time the president get his priorities straight.

Kids should see a family pediatrician regularly instead of whoever happens to be on call at the emergency room when someone’s sick. They should be helped to get healthy and stay healthy, not just treated when it’s too late. Children are our future, and more of them are uninsured than ever.

John J. Sweeney is president of the AFL-CIO. Mike Cerbo is executive director of the Colorado AFL-CIO.

READER COMMENTS

The Democrat version of the "New and Improved SCHIP" is exactly what America needs right now - another Government program designed to reward women for getting pregnant and dropping out of school. "Don't worry about social and financial responsibility, we will make sure everything is ok for you and however many kids you decide to have, as long as you vote Democrat!"

Marie mentions the roots of our people. This kind of reminds me of the American Revolution. The British (Democrats) are taxing the middle class (Revolutionaries) at an exorbanent rate and are providing no useful services in return. Heavily tax one group for the exclusive benefit of another. No wonder our ancestors revolted.

To make SHCIP palatable to Republicans to other "good Americans" let's have Blackwater or better yet, Haliburton administer the program. That way the program's percieved excesses will make their way into the pockets of the "deserving few."

Extorting smokers yet again is likely to generate an increase in negative outcomes for the extortionists.The most immediate result of the proposed tobacco tax increase will be the smuggling of tobacco by the drug cartels and the enrichment of those crime syndicates.A more insidious result will be the radicalization of people who smoke.It's not good for anyone when breaking the law becomes a patriotic duty.

People have times when they are down on their luck and need a helping hand. I think we Americans, culturally are very supportive and generous when it comes to helping out those in need.

Our roots come from various people who made their own way in an uncertain and dangerous world, All of us here, at some point, hail from peoples who came from somewhere else. It means that we carry the genes of strong, self-sufficient, resourceful people. One thing we Americans cannot tolerate is lazy, irresponsible people who lay around whining for handouts.

When people are down on their luck, we certainly want to help them out TEMPORARILY until they get back on their feet. But these folks who breed like rabbits and always have their hand out - they are another matter.

We have WIC, food stamps and later free school breakfast & lunch to feed them.Free daycare through the early childhood school porgrams. Free healthcare, so they do not have to practice a healthly lifestyle. Section 8 housing, maybe. Workforce (a taxpayer supported program) will train them, give then free computers (YES) and pay for their school. What do the taxpayers get in return?

Is there ever an end in sight? Do they stop having babies they cannot afford?

I certainly do not mind helping someone who is temporarily down and out, but long term assistance - I'd rather spend the money on group homes to raise their children, than enable them to teach their children their lousy loser ways.

If that makes me a wingnut, well I am a wingnut who believes in personal responsibilty.

Here's a CHP program I can support:
Proof of support from both mommy and daddy.
A plan to move into a financial level to support kids with a time limit.
Pledge to have NO MORE CHILDREN until out of financial straits.
Immediate dismissal from program if violate no children pledge.
In stead of free gimmees, low-interest loans to cover expenses.

Froward,

Again, thank you for confirming that this bill is nothing more than a front for socialized medicine.

Glad to see you think you know what is best for me and my family. That is the whole problem with socialized medicine in one sentence. Stop trying to do my thinking for me and please don't allow the government to have any more ability to make a mess of the situation than it already has done.

We, my family, think that our ability to make our own choices in health care is important enough to forgo things others consider necessary, like cable TV, eating out, fancy food and expensive hobbies. We either buy most of our food at Sam's Club and stretch a pound of hamburger to two meals for four people, three of them adults or buy the share monthly package and go to the actual markets to buy produce and other things. A bread machine makes our bread for a tenth of the cost of store bread and tastes better. I visit the farmer's markets and buy the tired produce to make sauce and stocks that will add flavor without adding a lot of expense. I know a meat market that sells chicken backs to make stock or provide a cooked chicken meat to provide meat for several meals. We follow the old adage from the depression that applies just as more now as it did then.
"Use it up,
Wear it out,
Make it do or
Do without.

In short, OK, for me it's short, we make the choice to live as independent of government as we can. Our grand daughter is healthy and if she needs to see a doctor we have to charge the 30 dollar co-pay for that visit and pay if off in three or four payments. Government managed health care might be simpler..it would never be better.

SCHIP is a program with the stated mission and purpose of providing health care for poor children. Any plan that is for adults should be submitted as such not slipped in under the slogan, "for the children." It is obvious that the entire problem with this bill stems from the push to socialize medicine by those who know it will never be approved or accepted by the American people. Were it something people would accept there would be no need for the lies the socialized medicine crowd tells to hide their agenda in this bill.

I don't oppose people having health care. I oppose people getting health care by whining and sticking out a hand instead of working and planning and taking care of themselves. We had a payment plan that would have paid all the bills in a few years. One hospital decided they wanted theirs now and threatened to garnishee my husband's pay.
You might check out the following link. wwwwakeupamericans-spree.blogspot.com/2007/10/presidents-radio-address-text-schip.html

It will give you more information than I can provide.

Well mommy y unlike you, I think you, especially you and your family would be better off with Universal Health care. insofar as me, I would benefit too. although not as much as you. I am currently paying off $150,000 IN LONG TERM CARE THAT WAS FORCED UPON MY FATHER after HE WAS DECLARED TERMINAL AND TRIED TO COMIT SUSIDE. (thank you Weld County) Its not my bill it was his. He tried to spare me from it. AND YET I AM PAYING IT??? When he realized the insurance company fooled him into thinking he didn’t need long term care insurance. Because an 80 year old is gonna die from an accident? Yeah right.

It's interesting to note that if you beat a child, starve it, or abuse it, you'll go to jail and generate headlines. However, if you bring a child into the world that you can't support or afford or raise properly, you get free financial and psychological support every step of the way. Yes, we should help children have a better life, but at the same time we need to actively work on preventing births to families who can't provide a decent life. How can bringing another baby into a poverty-ridden home be anything but passive child abuse?

Apparently all the wing nuts can think of is to call those supporting health care for children socialists and then withhold care from children who chose bad parents.
Typical for the greedy and hateful among us.

"It's the right thing to do".
Spoken as an absolute, as another "consensus" truism that doesn't allow for any discussion.
If you don't, for whatever reason(s), buy into the "right thing to do" fact, then you are a mean, selfish and insensitive buffoon.
OK, maybe I am. I don't think I am, but that seems to be all that is left after the "fact" of right thing to do is declared.
As someone else noted, a lot of the kid's, who admittedly had no say in their arrival on the planet, are in single mom homes. I guess, by extension, having kid's you know you can't afford to support is also "the right thing to do"?
Or fathering children you have no intent of supporting, financially or any other way, is also "the right thing to do"?
I also hate hearing the stories of children suffering from poor, or nonexistent, health care. The children didn't have any control over their idiot moms and dads who put them on the earth, KNOWING they couldn't afford them.
I would feel a tiny bit better if coupled with demands to "do the right thing", these socialists who demand universal health care at least acknowledged that a part of the problem is people cranking out welfare babies. But not once in any of the massive number of arguments I have heard/read on this subject is ANY responsibility placed on the parents.
It's a whole other matter how this program that some claim works, is being expanded to people who do NOT have a financial need. If you make, as a family of four, eighty thousand plus a year, and can't "afford" you health insurance, you're spending your money wrong. And that's perfectly OK by me. Until you demand that you also get to spend MY money (taxes) in order to pay for your health care. Might as well demand that it's the "right thing to do" that I also pick up the tab for your dinner! Or maybe your have to have car, or cell phone, or INTERNET connection.
Last, but certainly not least, how many of the "American children" to be covered under the expanded S-CHIP program are here illegally? Funds for S-CHIP come fro the Federal Government, which means Federal tax payers. For all the claims of how illegals pay into the tax base, they mostly do NOT do so through the Federal Income Tax.
Once again this is a program being pushed, forced, upon the American people as something "right", when it is anything but.

In Saturday's Denver Post, they profiled a woman with children who was fretting because her children used to be on SCHIP but are no longer because she took a slightly higher paying job (although without health benefits)

No mention of the father was made in the Article.

NO MENTION OF THE FATHER WAS MADE IN THE ARTICLE.

Why should taxpayers foot the bill for her kids when the daddy presumeably is getting a free ride?

Why won't these groups that support taxpayer-funded handouts provide the statistics on: what % of these kids are supported financially by both parents?
what % of these kids are born to unmarried women?

How about this: Nobody's perfect, so how about we agree to support the first mistake (child), but the support for continued mistakes is on the mommy and the daddy?

I do not want my tax dollars rewarding other people's bad behavior.

The government ATM machine is in the hands of the liberals and they are determined to to publish the pin number.

This issue is health care for poor children. Thank you for confirming that it is a stealth measure to introduce socialized medicine to the US.

Socialized medicine costs more, reduces choices and treatments and makes as big a mess of health care as any other government program.

Ask that guy in England who can't get his broken foot set because he smokes.

Ask those in end stage breast cancer in Canada where treatment is limited. Ask the mothers of children with severe birth defects in France who get to watch their babies die because there is no treatment permitted. Ask the man I know from Canada who had to come here to get the care for his badly broken leg because in Canada he could not get it in the time needed for it to be effective. I had a lot of time to talk to him as he rode in my taxi from Denver to Vail weekly, and then bi-monthly for the better part of a year.

As a Republican who is in the process of filing bankruptcy because of medical bills that my insurance refused to pay, in violation of the policy, and other medical expenses resulting from 5 heart attacks and three surgeries in 8 months, I represent the real people who would be damaged by government health care. In Canada I would not have received the pacemaker/defibrilator that keeps me alive. As a diabetic with failing kidneys and a heart with severe, irreparable damage. I wouldn't have had the drug treatments that kept me alive until I had the surgery. In Canada two of the drugs are not used. A third is only for those who are eligible for surgery and I wouldn't qualify. So I have a lot ot lose under socialized medicine. We almost lost our home. We have lost everything else and we don't need the government messing it up more.

momma y? what’s wrong with everyone having health care? why is it so necessary to be absolutely certain that the family is poor enough. Don’t you trust your fellow republicans to keep out of subsidized health care? The joke flowing around is, ”whatever health care system develops, there will be a line... Behind all the Republicans.” This vehement, abhorrent opposition to Universal health care is either, 1) sinister and mean. Or 2) in reality, fear that those liberals will eventually be as healthy as Republicans. Or my belief 3) the realization of having paid into, for-profit HMO pockets all these years, will expose Conservatives as narrow-minded selfish dunderheaded individuals they really are. Why not get past the political infighting, rise to the level of looking out for All AMERICANS. I am certain that Universal health care will not exclude Republicans. It will be just that UNIVERSAL. Republicans have proven over the last 7 years that it is not fiscal responsibility they are concerned for. it is spending on political cronies, lining the pockets of fellow republicans that matters most. Government as an ATM machine is the republican standard mode of operations. Reinvestment in future generations with health care is not a republican priority.

Why also always raise the cig tax? Why not put it on something that will effect non-smokers as well? If it is the right thing to do then non-smokers shouldn't mind if they put an extra gas tax or something to that effect. Cigs have already been taxed unfairly and if it is the poor that smoke then they will end up paying towards the ins. anyway. I am tired of this discrimination and we need to fight back. I believe everyone should be effected by this.

What is your answer to the increases that will raise the limit to almost 80K in some states while enrolling more adults than children in others?

Bush has addressed this but you seem not to have seen or heard it.

Let's limit the bill to children in families at no more than twice the poverty level. Or does the AFL-CIO, socialism in government junkies that they are, think it more important to push an agenda for socialized medicine than to make sure the money goes to poor kids not middle class adults.

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