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Home > Opinion > President Bush rejects bill to insure our nation's children
President Bush rejects bill to insure our nation's children
BY JARED DYRDAHL
STATESMAN STAFF WRITER
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Last week, President Bush vetoed a bill which proposed to add $60 billion to the State Children's Health Insurance Program (SCHIP). This program provides medical insurance to low-income families who are too poor to afford health care coverage but too well-off to be covered by Medicaid. The SCHIP would have provided health care coverage to 6.6 million individuals, the great majority of whom were young children. My question to the president is: Why?
I know that our nation is in a financial crunch and that we must choose our initiatives wisely, but what is more important than health care? After all, adequate health care for our nation's youth embodies the dearly held American value of equal opportunity. For example, the ill child whose parents can't afford health care will either struggle or be absent from school. These kids miss out on a valuable education that could allow them to raise their living standard. The truth of the matter is that ample health care coverage could not only help students become healthy and productive adults, but it could also be the difference between life and death for some youth.
If you read the White House official Web site, you will find that one of the president's main objectives is to increase access to health care for society's downtrodden, yet he vetoed a bill that would have accomplished this very goal. If you look at the budget, you can see that he is more concerned with cementing his reputation as a militaristic president, with his budget aiming to spend $157.5 billion on our nation's research and development of weapons systems. I seriously can't believe that we couldn't use $60 billion of that money to provide adequate health care for our nation's youth.
So why exactly would Republican lawmakers oppose this bill? The pathetic basis for their opposition is likely 100 percent political and partisan. After all, this was an unprecedented Democratic bill in that it was actually supported by the largest health insurance and big drug company lobbying firms. It appears that the Republicans are digging in for a potential battle over universal health care. For Republicans, a line in the sand had to be drawn somewhere; if they continued to give in and expand health care coverage, they would likely find themselves in a pretty political pickle once the Democrats pressed the issue.
I'm happy that those who voted against this were able to draw a line somewhere. I just wonder if that line will at all resemble the one that impoverished children will have to follow as they are turned away from our nation's hospitals.
