When a child is enrolled in the State Children’s Health Insurance Program (Schip), the positive results can be dramatic. For example, after asthmatic children are enrolled in Schip, the frequency of their attacks declines on average by 60 percent, and their likelihood of being hospitalized for the condition declines more than 70 percent.
Regular care, in other words, makes a big difference. That’s why Congressional Democrats, with support from many Republicans, are trying to expand Schip, which already provides essential medical care to millions of children, to cover millions of additional children who would otherwise lack health insurance.
But President Bush says that access to care is no problem - “After all, you just go to an emergency room” - and, with the support of the Republican Congressional leadership, he’s declared that he’ll veto any Schip expansion on “philosophical” grounds.
It must be about philosophy, because it surely isn’t about cost. One of the plans Mr. Bush opposes, the one approved by an overwhelming bipartisan majority in the Senate Finance Committee, would cost less over the next five years than we’ll spend in Iraq in the next four months. And it would be fully paid for by an increase in tobacco taxes.
The House plan, which would cover more children, is more expensive, but it offsets Schip costs by reducing subsidies to Medicare Advantage - a privatization scheme that pays insurance companies to provide coverage, and costs taxpayers 12 percent more per beneficiary than traditional Medicare.
Strange to say, however, the administration, although determined to prevent any expansion of children’s health care, is also dead set against any cut in Medicare Advantage payments.
So what kind of philosophy says that it’s O.K. to subsidize insurance companies, but not to provide health care to children?
Well, here’s what Mr. Bush said after explaining that emergency rooms provide all the health care you need: “They’re going to increase the number of folks eligible through Schip; some want to lower the age for Medicare. And then all of a sudden, you begin to see a - I wouldn’t call it a plot, just a strategy - to get more people to be a part of a federalization of health care.”
Now, why should Mr. Bush fear that insuring uninsured children would lead to a further “federalization” of health care, even though nothing like that is actually in either the Senate plan or the House plan? It’s not because he thinks the plans wouldn’t work. It’s because he’s afraid that they would. That is, he fears that voters, having seen how the government can help children, would ask why it can’t do the same for adults.
And there you have the core of Mr. Bush’s philosophy. He wants the public to believe that government is always the problem, never the solution. But it’s hard to convince people that government is always bad when they see it doing good things. So his philosophy says that the government must be prevented from solving problems, even if it can. In fact, the more good a proposed government program would do, the more fiercely it must be opposed.
This sounds like a caricature, but it isn’t. The truth is that this good-is-bad philosophy has always been at the core of Republican opposition to health care reform. Thus back in 1994, William Kristol warned against passage of the Clinton health care plan “in any form,” because “its success would signal the rebirth of centralized welfare-state policy at the very moment that such policy is being perceived as a failure in other areas.”
But it has taken the fight over children’s health insurance to bring the perversity of this philosophy fully into view.
There are arguments you can make against programs, like Social Security, that provide a safety net for adults. I can respect those arguments, even though I disagree. But denying basic health care to children whose parents lack the means to pay for it, simply because you’re afraid that success in insuring children might put big government in a good light, is just morally wrong.
And the public understands that. According to a recent Georgetown University poll, 9 in 10 Americans - including 83 percent of self-identified Republicans - support an expansion of the children’s health insurance program.
There is, it seems, more basic decency in the hearts of Americans than is dreamt of in Mr. Bush’s philosophy.
Paul Krugman is Professor of Economics at Princeton University and a regular New York Times columnist. His most recent book is The Great Unraveling: Losing Our Way in the New Century.
© 2007 The New York Times
And the pres. calls himself a christian? You Christians out there have this jerk to look up to? Good luck boys and girls.
It is becoming increasingly apparent that the needs, opinions, values, and political demands of any except powerful corporate interests are irrelevant to this criminal. The utter and arrogant dismissiveness that Bush exhibited toward this most necessary program proved that to me. “just go to the emergency room”? Are you kidding me? How about you going to the ER for your colonoscopy, or maybe Dick could go there for his next heart fix. Indeed, what better metaphor for this gang than Cheney’s defective heart?
the health care crisis in the US is a bi-partisan affair. the “democrats” had decades in which to try and pass single-payer and they failed. Clinton campaigned on it in 1992 and he reneged (with a “democratic” congress in power). Both parties are in the pockets of the for-profit health care corporations and pharmaceutical companies. We can’t expect them to lead a fight to change the system from which they all profit.
Bush believes in unfettered free enterprise with special protection for those who won the birth lottery. Obviously his Christian beliefs have always been more for show, to help round up the votes of the gullible, but I think he also finds comfort in believing that Jeezus makes sure the good and deserving souls win the birth lottery or get lucky in business and end up with millions, and the only way one should lose one’s privileged position is by disturbing heaven’s grand design and giving in to the masses by adopting some form of the dreaded “gubmint soshalizm.”
How ironic that this idiot is so philosophically against harming a fetus, yet can deny a walking, feeling, thinking, possibly suffering child….Go figure………………..
Well, Krugman’s nailed it again. It’s ALL about big money. EVERYTHING that W does is about big money. Making sure that big money gets more and more of it, and you lose all you have.
This administration is completely immoral and inhuman. They are the biggest law breakers in this country, and should be locked away so they can NEVER do any more damage to this world.
I’d sure like to see the republicans justify the deaths of CHILDREN for their “philosophy”. Screw your damned philospohy, this is CHILDREN’S LIVES we are talking about. How completely morally bankrupt they are. And you could tell that DECADES ago when they told us all how moral they were. ANYONE who has to tell you that is NOT a moral person at all. And when you have a whole group of them, just lock them up for lying right away and save yourself the troubles they will cause you later.
Time for some RICO laws to be used against the entire republican party, IMHO.
finally somebody says it. thank you krugman. no doubt bush is an idiot, and far far worse than an idiot, but some/much of this “incompetence” thing is actually the agenda, to create distrust in gov’t. i think a lot of that is behind the post-katrina lunacy.
Once again it is all about money and power. It is not just this current administration either. It is time for a real change in this country or we might as well get used to living with no rights at all…
So, where’s that “vaunted” Ted Kennedy?
Seems as though he’s been pretty quiet these
past three years.
RFK he ain’t!
IF Bush and his buddys could figure out a way to remove all the oxygen from the USA, they would be selling you bottled air next week.
Evil doer?
“You that are accursed, depart from me into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels;
for I was hungry and you gave me no food, I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink,
I was a stranger and you did not welcome me, naked and you did not give me clothing, sick and in prison and you did not visit me.”
Then they also will answer, “Lord, when was it that we saw you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or sick or in prison, and did not take care of you?”
Then he will answer them, “Truly I tell you, just as you did not do it to one of the least of these, you did not do it to me.”
And these will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life.
– Matthew 25:42-46.
The only government program Republicans approve is bombing people.
“And there you have the core of Mr. Bush’s philosophy. He wants the public to believe that government is always the problem, never the solution.”
It certainly rings true in the years of his presidency!
Are we supposed to believe bush has a “philosophy” about anything? Why do we even bother analyzing what the lying SOB manages to sputter from his smirking lips? It’s like arguing with a drunk - he’ll wake up with amnesia, you’ll still be pissed off.
The “philosophy” is clear: they want us to fear the “government” is “bad” - they want to take away all our guns and expensive insurance and make us have gay sex with stem cell abortionists! Damn socialist liberals! And while we’re distracted, our so-called “representatives” work with former representatives - AKA, lobbyists - and their corporate paymasters to empty not just today’s Treasury, but tomorrow’s and the next day’s, too.
Because, you know, God told them to, so it’s all good…
BushCo’s purpose is, and always has been to steal as much “stuff” for their investors as possible, before people wake up and run them out of town. After 6 years, nothing they do along these lines should surprise anyone.
So let me get this straight: the government is going to do nothing for it’s citizens, who will then come running, out of gratitude, to fight any pre-emptive or elective war the government wants.
And of course the war, being a government program concerned with killing people, not helping them, will be run flawlessly.
The sad thing is: I bet Americans buy it!
Health care is only for the wealthy. Just like food and shelter. Those who can’t afford it don’t deserve it. What could be simpler?
I’ve said this before. What part don’t you understand?
“They” are better than the rest of us. We are obviously inferior. Otherwise, we would be wealthy and have everything we need. I just can’t understand how so many people can miss something so obvious!
Please forgive my cynicism. I have passed the point of simple, civil conversation.
As long as we live in a nation with capitalism as its’ cornerstone, oppression, violence, deprivation and abuse is all we can expect. If we are EVER to build a human SOCIETY we MUST abandon our ownership mentality. Social beings live by sharing and cooperating not stealing and oppressing.
War is NOT Peace. Death is NOT Life.
non_sequitur@q.com
Interesting that Bush sees, and is afraid of, a strategy of incremental increases in Federal health insurance. Seems like a clear reflection of his own strategy of incremental privatization of Federal programs.
And there you have the core of Mr. Bush’s philosophy. He wants the public to believe that government is always the problem, never the solution. This time it is the government. Mathew 25:42-46, very cool!
Slaves don’t get health care. Slaves don’t get education. Slaves get a life of slow strangulation followed by a slit trench and a loose covering of quick lime. Living is for Master, dying is for slaves. Wealth, power, and privilege are for Master, degradation, misery, and disease are for the slaves.
Master is Mr. Bush’s constituency. Master is the RepubliCrat constituency - including all of those ‘presidential’ wannabes. This country belongs to Master, his Super-Citizen Corporations (whose ‘Rights’ trump all others), and his political Overseers.
Until we rise up against them, defeat them, and place them back on the chains of the Roosevelt Legacy — we are nothing but slaves here.
You like serving in a nice 80-20 feudalistic authoritarian slave society, don’t you? Yeah, sure you do. Just as long as you’re one of the 20.
Have another seizure Mr. Roberts, make it terminal this time. Have the ‘little woman’ call the boys in Opus Dei and have them do a Novena for the remission of your sins. Your place is not among humans. Your place is in the xrstian ‘heaven’ along with the rest of the flat earth deities and demons. You don’t scan as human. You scan as richfilth and however cleverly executed, your impersonations of huimanity count for nothing for anyone with a sense of smell.
Shame on all of you folks for jumping all over poor Mr Bush! He is only repeating what Ronnie told us in a State of the Union speech. Government is the problem, he said and had a forklift of booklets to demonstrate his point. Just take good care of the rich capitalists and watch it all trickle down to the rest of us. Also watch out for welfare queens as they are getting away with the money.
On the other hand, no amount of government or expenditure is too much if it is weapons or defense. Debt is no problem for the nation as long as war is the cause. Cut taxes for the rich and soon we will have plenty of funds for everything.
George doesn`t like to think so all he has to do is repeat the old mantra. The difference is that Ronnie said it in a nice way instead of acting like a used car salesman.
CBH, you are right, our prez is the Christians worst enemy as his actions seem to go against what they are supposed to stand for. The early Christians were taught to take care of each other and there was no mention of capitalism and privatization being the proper solution.
As it seems now, the president of the USA is fighting legal abortion rights. He is using a back-door to help the poor people to solve the problem by withholding them the needed children`s healthcare. A real Christian`s solution.
Hans.Landskroon
Do Americans care that latest world health surveys now put Cuba ahead of the USA in the important indicators of average life expectancy and babies surviving beyond the first 12 months?
How long before third world countries like Bangladesh overtake the USA?
Hmmmm. bush and his boyfriends have unfettered access to healthcare, as evidenced by his recent colonoscopy, darth cheney’s recharging of his heart(less) batteries, and John Roberts’ quick and easy access via air/ambulance to medical care from a remote summer home in Port Clyde, ME.
Too bad those SOBs figure American kids don’t deserve even basic healthcare.
For shame!
Government is a failure. bush and his boyfriends have made it so.
Mission accomplished.
We’ve traded our country for a tv and an SUV. Was it worth it?
I agree with the main point of this article: Republicans are immoral.
It’s not only “big government” that people are being trained to see as the problem, it’s also the little people.
As America’s economy is funneled into genocidal wars to enrich the reptilian aristocracy, (no, I don’t believe they are aliens, but they are cold-blooded and have no guts, no spines, no hearts and no consciense, so they are not human either,) the media plays the part of the wizard, “don’t look at the truth, look at that poor single mother and imagine how much richer you’d be if you were not being robbed through taxes to feed her bastards!”
We are being carefully trained by those who worship Moloch at Bohemian Grove and burn wriggling “effigies” to him in their CREMATION OF CARE ceremonies to care as little as they do about those in need. So when poor areas are cut off and starved, or murdered with experimental viruses, we’ll care no more than middle class America cared about the Katrina victims.
What’s the big deal? After all, children don’t vote so they don’t count. Without quality health care, with any luck they won’t live long enough to have their votes stolen by paperless machines anyway. People who can’t afford health care also can’t afford campaign contributions so they don’t count, either.
“Immoral”? I think you are using a word this government does not understand.