Children’s Healthcare Is a No-Brainer
Deamonte Driver had a toothache. He was 12 years old. He had no insurance, and his mother couldn’t afford the $80 to have the decayed tooth removed. He might have gotten it taken care of through Medicaid, but his mother couldn’t find a dentist who accepted the low reimbursements. Instead, Deamonte got some minimal attention from an emergency room, his condition worsened and he died. Deamonte was one of 9 million children in the U.S. without health insurance.
Congress is considering bipartisan legislation that will cover poor children in the U.S.
The major obstacle? President Bush is vowing to veto the bill, even though Republican and Democratic senators reached bipartisan agreement on it. The bill adds $35 billion to the State Children’s Health Insurance Program over the next five years by increasing federal taxes on cigarettes.
The conservative Heritage Foundation is against the tobacco tax to fund SCHIP, saying that it “disproportionately burdens low-income smokers” as well as “young adults.” No mention is made of any adverse impact on Heritage-funder Altria Group, the cigarette giant formerly known as Philip Morris.
According to the American Association for Respiratory Care, with every 10 percent rise in the cigarette tax, youth smoking drops by 7 percent and overall smoking declines by 4 percent. Marian Wright Edelman, founder of the Children’s Defense Fund, says: “It is a public health good in and of itself and will save lives to increase the tobacco tax. Cigarettes kill and cigarettes provoke lung cancer, and every child and every [other] human being we can, by increasing the cigarette tax, stop from smoking or slow down from smoking is going to have a public health benefit, save taxpayers money from the cost of the effects of smoking and tobacco.”
Two programs serve as the health safety net for poor and working-class children: Medicaid and SCHIP (pronounced “s-chip”). SCHIP is a federal grant program that allows states to provide health coverage to children who belong to working families earning too much to be eligible for Medicaid but not enough to afford private health insurance when their employers do not provide it. It’s the SCHIP funding that is now being debated in Congress.
The Children’s Defense Fund has published scores of stories similar to Deamonte’s. Children like Devante Johnson of Houston. At 13, Devante was fighting advanced kidney cancer. His mother tried to renew his Medicaid coverage, but bureaucratic red tape tied up the process. By the time Devante got access to the care he needed, his fate was sealed. He died at the age of 14, in Bush’s home state, only miles from the M.D. Anderson Cancer Center, one of the world’s leading cancer treatment and research facilities.
With children’s lives at stake, Edelman has no patience for political gamesmanship: “Why is this country, at this time, the richest in the world, arguing about how few or how many children they can serve? We ought to-this is a no-brainer. The American people want all of its children served. All children deserve health coverage, and I don’t know why we’re having such a hard time getting our president and our political leaders to get it, that children should have health insurance.”
Republican Sen. Gordon Smith originally introduced the SCHIP budget resolution in the Senate. Unlike Bush, who is not up for re-election, Smith is defending his vulnerable Senate seat in 2008, in the blue state of Oregon. He, like other Republicans who are breaking with Bush on the war in Iraq, is sensitive to Bush’s domestic policies. Georgetown University’s Center for Children and Families just released a poll that says 91 percent of Americans support the expansion of SCHIP to cover more kids.
And the American people are willing to go much further. As demonstrated by the popularity of Michael Moore’s latest blockbuster, “SiCKO,” the public, across the political spectrum, is ready to fix the U.S. healthcare system. How many more children like Deamonte and Devante have to die before the politicians, all with great health insurance themselves, take action?
Amy Goodman is the host of “Democracy Now!,” a daily international TV/radio news hour airing on 500 stations in
© 2007 Amy Goodman; distributed by King Features Syndicate
To hell with “healthcare for children.” We need healthcare for everybody!
I’d vote for Fidel if we could get healthcare for everyone!
As a smoker, I am sick and tired of being singled out for paying taxes for others benefits. I am all for health care for children and everyone else. But I am right now paying more in cigarette tax every month than I am paying for health insurance. And you smug butt nuggets say its a no-brainer. It is a brainer. Tax gas. Tax disposable diapers. Tax air. Stop picking on the 20 percent who apparently are second class citizens.
Take it out of the defense budget.
Vfor911: This smug butt nugget says that your smoking addiction is a personal problem with HUGE social consequences! So if you can’t afford the taxes, guess you better quit smoking. Just like if you can’t afford property taxes on a multi-million dollar home, guess you shouldn’t have bought it in the first place.
And yes, how much do we spend in Iraq every single month? Hello, plenty of money to go around if we just put our priorities back in order.
Hey fred1, If 91 percent of the population likes the idea why not tax 91 percent instead of 20 percent? I apologize for using the smug butt nugget line. I lose it sometimes.
Plus, I am not a burden on anyone, like I said I have insurance. Why should I be paying for someone else’s insurance? Moreover, I used to pay more for insurance for smoking. Not now. Why? Wouldn’t it make sense for smokers to pay more? Are insurance companies screwing non-smokers? Wouldn’t surprise me. But, they are suppose to be in it for the money. If smokers are a bigger risk, they should pay more. I even quit for awhile thinking I would get a discount, that’s when I found out the discount was gone. LIke I said, I am for health care, I just want everyone to pay their fair share.
If we had a single payer universal health care system like we should, there would be no issue.
fred1, I agree! Plus, why can’t it be voluntary. We got 91 percent on board, right?
Sure, you should have the option to keep your private insurance or go for the universal health coverage, just like in all the other countries with a single payer system.
I am a smoker and a cigarette addict. I don’t agree with Vfor911. I do not take further escalations in the cigarette tax personnally. It is regressive only because it affects more poor people than others. I have seen a lot of my friends quit smoking because of the cost. And I think that is a good thing. I’m just not there yet. And if an increase in cigarette taxes helps save the lives of children and gets them medical care, I’m all for it. If the additional cost of smoking finally gets me to quit, I’m for that too.
I know that my views are in the minority of smokers, but that’s their problem. The fact is that I have control over what I do. Whether I can afford it is also a personal decision.
I agree that a universal single-payer health program is the best solution in the long run. Children’s health is important, but everyone deserves health care. I also think that punishing smokers is just another way to avoid making the rich pay their fair share of taxes. I am not outright opposed to so-called “sin taxes”, but I don’t think increasing them is the answer. The problem with such taxes is that they are regressive, as are all sales taxes, in the sense that the tax isn’t so much if you have a high income, but it’s a lot if you have a lower income. In other words, it’s unfair to the poor. What ever happened to progressive income tax?
Rebel Farmer, I am sure you are a minority within a minority. Fact is, the minority shouldn’t be paying a tax that benefits all. Its an unfair tax. Here’s an idea. Let’s decriminalize cannabis. I would be more than happy to pay a dollar a pack tax and we wouldn’t have to pay for incarceration of non-criminals. Double the benefit.
Universal Healthcare
It’s Free for Everyone
Universal Healthcare for everyone isn’t free but it’s MUCH cheaper than buying bombs and bullets to butcher babies!
Let’s spend our tax money to REALLY protect the American people from things like hunger, disease and ignorance.
How about taxing all those yachts discussed on the “Richistan” article a few days ago, or as MEG wisely pointed out, take it out of the disgusting amoral defense budget! How Bush can call himself religious and deny impoverished children a RIGHT TO LIFE while driving our nation into moral and fiscal debt to build “low level nuclear bunker busters,” a new generation of NUCLEAR bombs says it all. These people are GOD-less… they can dress up their image in any kind of religious PR campaign but actions speak louder than words. The Master teacher Jesus said, “Judge the tree by its fruit.” The rot need not be seen, its smell is everywhere felt.
Bush’s views on health care make me sick.
First off, on July 10th, our Decider/Inquisitor/Commander Guy/Corporate and Religious Right Mouthpiece-in-chief made the incredibly callous and clueless remark that “people have access to health care in America. After all, you just go to an emergency room.”
Sure, and the rich and poor alike are free to sleep under bridges, too.
WTF? Was Bush’s line ad libbed, or did somebody actually write that line for him? My guess is the latter. The idea that “there is plenty of free health care in emergency rooms” has been tested, pushed, and refined by right-wing think tanks for several years. It finally percolated its way to the top, and blew out through Bush’s ignorant mouth.
Now I don’t want to go around seizin’ on every misquote or mistake that POTUS makes, for that would make for a whole lot of seizin’ (to everything there is a seizin’, so to speak), and I simply haven’t got that kind of time.
But our Compassionate Conservative-in-chief has gotten my dander up again by objecting on philosophical grounds to a bipartisan Senate proposal to boost the State Children’s Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) by $35 billion over five years by levying a 61-cent-a-pack increase in the federal excise tax on cigarettes.
By threatening to veto the proposed legislation, Bush has essentially told the 6.6 million children currently covered by SCHIP, and the 3.3 million presently uninsured American children for whom these additional funds would be used to provide medical care, to “Go to the emergency room.”
Mr. Bush apparently has no philosophical objections to the number of children equivalent to the entire population of the state of Oregon going without health care. Why should he? We all know that he also has no philosophical objections to the number of Iraqis he’s killed equivalent to the entire population of Austin, Texas.
After all, it has been made eminently clear these past six years that the ability of Mr. Bush and his ilk to care about life is inversely proportional to the number of cells something has. If we were raising the excise tax on cigarettes to protect one-hundred-celled blastocysts, well, then, that would be different.
We need to point out to the various Repuglicans who keep calling such things as Childrens Health Care “UnAmerican” and demanding that we Strictly Observe the Constitution the phrase in the Preamble where it declares that one of the purposes of Government is to “promote the general welfare”.
I think Health Care would fall under that requirement.
We the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.
DON’T miss amy’s democracy now interview with ms.edelman on the their website.they discuss the boy king’s latest marie antionette moment-when he contends that poor kids have access to health care because their folks can carry them to the er.it reminded me of his mom’s contention that the folks who fled to the indoor stadium in the wake of katrina were sort of analogous to kids at camp.those are two of the most callous,stupidest comments i have ever heard educated people make.i don’t know how many ivy league schools there are,but dubya has graduated from 2 of them.anyway,the interview is great.
AAgggh, healthcare, don’t get me started. 4 months without healthcare coverage and eight trips to the ER later, and the bills roll in for my autistic, epileptic daughter, insulin dependant husband, and me with a skin infection that won’t go away. Perhaps it’s easier for the poor middle class to die off….
Well, it is a brainer.
Liberal solutions typically involve subsidizing the very industries giving us grief and, if not done correctly, a government subsidy is simply incentive for the insurance/pharm industry to RAISE THE COSTS. They’ll raise their profits, and enjoy the best gravy train of all — a legally mandated one.
No, we need some sort of progressive single-payer system which offers no incentive for Insurance or Big Pharm to further gouge us.
Unfortunately Bush has less than No Brain.
Paul: You are absolutely right about a single payer program for ALL.
The problem is that this funding bill is before congress NOW to extend an EXISTING program that gives immediate relief to children. I’m not really in the mood right now to trust this congress to get off it’s butt and out of bed with Big Pharma/Insurance Co. Even if we get a Dem Pres, out of the current lot of probable winners, we still aren’t going to get Medicare for all.
So, I am going to fully support this funding and let my congress critters know it when it comes time to over ride Shrub’s veto.
“No child left behind.” Where have I read that?
I think this “health care for children” push is just a diversion. We obviously, from a humanitarian point of view, need health care for all. This should be what should be sought. Enough of this moving toward universal coverage “step by step” nonsense.
No-brainer. Consider the 30 odd percent of the brainless who still stand behind and support the evil ones running the US Executive branch (and still have power to adversely effect the behavior or the judicial and legislative branches). How is it possible? Is the 30% crowd’s ongoing support of the PP’s (the psychopathic personalities, as the late Mr. Vonnegut called them) who continue to control the future of our nation and our society a sign of some incurable congenital cognitive disorder? Like the poor, I believe that this large amalgam (economic elite and/or fanatically religious and/or nationalist jingoist subgroups) of socially dysfunctional population will always be with us.
Certainly it is no surptise that GWB does not care about the welfare of children, especially if it would take a few nickels away from his great war on terror that has killed and maimed possibly hundreds of thousands of Iraqi children that he refuses to acknowledge, as well as our own casualties. Compassionate? Conservative? Christian?
Why do people oppose paying taxes for healthcare but are willing to pay more in insurance premiums for less healthcare?
Healthcare for children?
How many children have contributed to the Rethuglican National Commitee? Send a check to your Congressional Representatives Kids!
Well, I’ve got to say I watched DemocracyNow and this topic, and it was the first time I was disappointed. I didn’t see any opposing viewpoint, especially because of the way it is proposed to be funded off of smokers only. Just why it Congress couldn’t find the money in the general budget? Don’t you think it’s unfair to pick on an addicted percentage of the population? I didn’t keep track of how many times the guest Edleman said , the richest country in the world. Really now, who is kidding who? And weren’t the tobacco companies sued and tons of money put into discouraging the youth from smoking?
I’d like to see all people have healthcare. I haven’t seen the movie Sicko yet, but plan to. Wonder how Mike Moore or the general population would feel about a fat tax?
I assume you folks mean single payer universal health care for every American Citizen?
There are children dying of tooth-decay in a western country in the 21st Century - WTF?!!
Absolutely ludricrous in the tragic extreme.
I’d be willing to bet all of my teeth, that if Bush had heard his response would be something like “Why didn’t mommy show him a toothbrush?”
Thank you Vfor911 - more of us should pop a gasket. More ‘vice taxes’ - which are extremely regressive - to fund even ’socially beneficial’ programs is just plain illogical. For, if they have their desired effect, that program goes broke! This is a glaring example of Liberals running AMOK, especially in the Maine Legislature. Maine is one of the poorest states, yet has the highest cigarette TAXES anywhere on the Planet - regressive as hell. More than that, it shows how completely lacking in REAL ideas for funding our infrastructure - Like Taxing Corporations and Large Land Trusts fairly… like the rest of us !
For that matter fred1, driving Cars has HUGE social consequences, as does most other daily realities of Life in this ‘technologigally advanced’ mess of a Country we live in. And what could have more HUGE social consequences than the perpetual WAR Machine that this Country has become !
Health Care for All is the only Moral Choice. Heck, we could fund the whole shebang with Halliburton’s Profits alone. And please, let’s layoff smokers - Don’t Progressives stand for personal Choice???
Yes, we need healthcare reform but it shouldn’t be as simple as “free healthcare for everyone”.
If anyone took the time to examine the developed countries that do have social healthcare you’d see they also have controlled population growth, lower immigration rate (therefore fewer poor) and heathier lifestyles.
As far as free healthcare for every child, where do we draw the limit? After someone has had their fourth or fifth child.
I say, after two children, you pay for the healthcare, you lose tax deductions, etc. You raise em’ on your dime.
The irresponsibilty of bringing too many humans into this world should not be shared by us all.
Arguably, the US has lost more wealth to the massive offshoring of our manufacturing & IT backbone than we have to an influx of new people eager to make a better life for themselves. What makes people poor — other than lack of jobs, lack of property, extraordinary cost of rent/real estate? Who denies them jobs and property?
I, for one, blame the banks and the politicians who’ve let them run amok. High cost of living (criminally inflated real estate), monopolization of resources by big boxes, etc. puts the American poor — and remant of the middle-class — into the same boat as new immigrants.
How about not only affordable healthcare available to all people here in the States, illegal or not, child or adult, but let’s think about all of those children orphaned by AIDS across Asia and Africa. It’s time we thought of the global poor as something other than disposable. Talk about a foreign policy rooted in a real valuing of life rather than our present obsession with dead-end militarism. And as for taxation policy, why not tax fast food, cigarettes, alcohol, gasoline, and other products whose social cost is disproportionate to their retail cost at higher levels than bread, broccoli, and school supplies? Such a move wouldn’t be puritan social engineering, but something of a reality check for industries that have imposed their real costs on the public via the medical system, while the profits have remained with the corporations.
Our government already provides ‘free’ health care for all of it’s employees, state and federal.) That’s a lot of near universal care. Our tax dollars provide each and every employee with the best health care money can buy. Why would any of our elected officials care whether or not their constituents had the same benefit???
On the chance you may be back, thanks normvincent.
NANOO,thanks for your post.i was so enthralled by ms.edelman’s verbal trouncing of the boy-king,that i overlooked the reactionary nature of the schip program itself.next time i’ll heed the words of bernard white-”stay strong,and pay close attention.”