children's health care

Building Blocks for Reform: Achieving Universal Coverage with Private and Public Group Health Insurance

Alex Lawson — Sat, 13 Dec 2008 09:33:07 -0500

SCHIP Counterattacks

Terrance Heath — Tue, 08 Jan 2008 15:15:28 -0500

State Children's Health Insurance Program

H.R. 976, the Children's Health Insurance Program Reauthorization Act of 2007 (CHIP Act):

Reauthorizes the State Children's Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) for five years.
Covers a projected 4.7 million more uninsured children, in addition to the 6 million children already enrolled.
Provides $35 billion in new funding for SCHIP over five years, on top of the current $25 billion baseline.
Pays for the expansion with a 61-cent-per-pack cigarette tax increase and increases in taxes on other tobacco products.

More legislative details are available in this American Medical Association chart.

Comebacks and Counterattacks

Conservative Spin	Progressive Response
Expanding SCHIP is really about moving us towards socialized medicine.	Unlike conservatives, a majority of Americans believe our government should play a role in guaranteeing health insurance for all, especially the 8.7 million children who today have no health insurance. And SCHIP is a government initiative that has proven effective in covering children. Thanks to SCHIP, America’s children are more widely covered than adults. It’s just common sense to expand what we know works.
Expanding SCHIP will force middle-class Americans to drop private insurance in favor of public assistance.	Of the families enrolled in SCHIP, the vast majority (86 percent) were uninsured at the time they enrolled. Most of the remaining families who dropped private insurance in favor of SCHIP did so because their plan was so expensive, they could not afford to properly cover their children. No one satisfied with their current insurance is required to join SCHIP.
The SCHIP bill will use your taxpayer dollars to give insurance to all families of four earning $83,000.	SCHIP was designed to give states flexibility—within reasonable limits—to set their own standards, meet their needs, and adapt to their cost of living and insurance. According to Congressional Quarterly, "Under current law, only the president can authorize states to use SCHIP to cover families earning $83,000, and Bush has declined to do so. The bill he vetoed would not change that procedure, and would discourage states from expanding SCHIP to families making three times the federal poverty level or more—$61,950 for a family of four."
The SCHIP bill allows illegal immigrants to receive health insurance.	People who are in the country illegally are still banned from receiving SCHIP benefits.

For More Information

The Center for Budget and Policy Priorities: "The Administration’s Dubious Claims About the Emerging Children’s Health Insurance Legislation"

In These Times: "The Bush Administration’s New Target: Uninsured Kids".

Kaiser Family Foundation: SCHIP Reauthorization

Cover The Uninsured: About SCHIP

Click here to learn why we're fighting for SCHIP

The Fight for Health Care for All Children

Terrance Heath — Tue, 08 Jan 2008 14:18:02 -0500

No More Photo Ops

America's children have a video message for conservative congresspeople thinking about sustaining Bush's veto of the SCHIP: No health care for us, no photo-ops for you!

Watch the video!

Support for expanding SCHIP is broad and deep: 81 percent of Democrats and 61 percent of Republicans. Why? Because SCHIP is a government program with a proven record of success. Americans, having common sense, are telling Congress to build on what we know works for our kids.

But conservatism can't abide by responsible and effective government. Conservatives are fine with scare-mongering about "government-run health care" even as they take your taxpayer dollars to subsidize insurance company CEOs instead of using those dollars to keep children healthy.

President Bush wants conservatives in Congress to join him in obstructing progress. We don't have to stand for it, and neither do our kids. Send a message today that you won't.

The State Children's Health Insurance Program

President Bush on October 3 vetoed expanding the State Children's Health Insurance Program, even though the government program is a proven success with broad bipartisan support. The existing program has been extended through November 16, An attempted House vote to override the veto is scheduled for October 18.

There are 47 million people in America without health insurance, and 9 million of these are children. Of that 9 million, two-thirds qualify for coverage under SCHIP.

SCHIP is designed to cover children whose parents work, but still can't afford insurance. The program gives each state the flexibility to set its own standards, meet its needs, and adapt to local costs of living and insurance.

SCHIP Works

Throughout the years SCHIP has proven to be effective. While the percentage of adults who are uninsured has gone up in recent years, the percentage of uninsured children consistently decreased from 1999-2005, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.

That progress began to reverse in 2005. Since then, health care costs have continued to skyrocket. Fewer private employers are offering affordable coverage. And federal funding to the states has not kept pace, making it impossible for states to keep their children healthy.

The moral: When SCHIP is funded properly it works and children get insurance coverage; when it isn't properly funded, they don't.

This isn't a theoretical argument about what's better, public or private. This is tested. It works. It's just common sense to expand it.

"To deny coverage to these children is not only morally wrong, it is profoundly bad public policy.

Denying children health coverage during their formative years leaves them far more vulnerable to preventable diseases, which costs patients, government and taxpayers far more to treat in the future...

But if [Congressional Democrats and Republicans], too, fail to act, 400,000 children in New York — and millions more across America — will continue to rely on the oldest and most precarious health insurance policy of all: waking up every morning and hoping and praying you don't get sick."

— Governor Elliot Spitzer, New York

Click here for more information about SCHIP

SCHIP and State Standards

Robert Borosage — Thu, 13 Dec 2007 15:34:48 -0500

The bill Bush vetoed would not change the current procedure, and would discourage states from expanding SCHIP to families making more then three times the federal poverty level—$61,950 for a family of four.

SCHIP and The Middle Class

Eric Lotke — Thu, 13 Dec 2007 15:29:47 -0500

Of the families enrolled in SCHIP, the vast majority (86 percent) were uninsured at the time they enrolled.

SCHIP and Immigration

Roger Hickey — Wed, 07 Nov 2007 13:54:06 -0500

People who are in the country illegally are still banned from receiving SCHIP benefits.

SCHIP and Insuring America's Children

Eran Lillestrand — Wed, 07 Nov 2007 13:52:40 -0500

Unlike conservatives, a majority of Americans believe our government should play a role in guaranteeing health insurance for all, especially the 8.7 million children who today have no health insurance.

The Fight for Children's Health Care

Roger Hickey — Tue, 06 Nov 2007 16:26:22 -0500

Of the 47 million people in America without health insurance, 9 million are children. Of that 9 million, two-thirds qualify for coverage under the State Children's Health Insurance Program. President Bush has stood in the way of an expansion of SCHIP, and conservatives have run a disinformation campaign designed to smear the effort to provide coverage for all of these children.

Read our special web section on SCHIP and follow how our bloggers chronicled the fight for health care for every child.

The Conservative Failure

Isaiah J. Poole — Tue, 06 Nov 2007 16:20:04 -0500

Seven years of conservative rule in Washington has made the problem worse. Nine million more Americans, 47 million total, are uninsured. Family health insurance premiums have risen 57%, while fewer businesses offer their employees coverage.

Instead of expanding coverage, conservatives blocked bipartisan legislation extending health care to 4 million uninsured children—twice. They lavished billions in subsidies on insurance companies, despite an astonishing 1,084% rise in insurance company profits during the last five years. And they continually sought to cut billions from Medicare and Medicaid.

Conservatives also have been looking out for the drug companies. Conservative congressman Billy Tauzin designed the law banning Medicare from negotiating lower drug prices, sticking taxpayers with a huge bill. As soon as the law passed, he resigned and took a $2 million job as CEO for the drug lobby. But the fellow conservatives he left behind
in Congress continued to do his bidding. After a new Congress was elected in 2006, the conservative minority stifled efforts to let Medicare negotiate lower drug prices and to allow Americans to import affordable medications from Canada.

With the public demanding health care reform, conservatives can’t completely ignore the issue. But their proposals would make problems worse—encouraging employers to drop health care coverage and offering individuals the illusion that tax breaks would make health insurance affordable for their families.

The insurance companies and their supporters are pushing plans that have deductibles as high as $11,000. They would make us pay taxes on our employer-paid health benefits or offer us tax credits that pay only a fraction of our health insurance. Tax credits don’t guarantee health care.

Conservatives pretend to offer freedom, yet they have left too many Americans stuck with only bad health care choices.

More Uninsured Children

Terrance Heath — Tue, 28 Aug 2007 17:32:12 -0400

In 2006, 11.7% of children, or 8.7 million kids, went without health insurance. That's up from the previous year, when 10.9%, or 8 million children, were uninsured.