By John J. Sweeney
Vetoing health coverage for 10 million children Oct. 3, President Bush said he wanted to target help to lower-income children. To make sure children already eligible can get health care. That taxpayer-funded health care isn't going to high-income families. That it doesn't encourage families to leave the private insurance market.
So House leaders refined their legislation to renew and expand the proven State Children's Health Insurance Program (SCHIP). They capped the income levels of families eligible for coverage, moved adults out of SCHIP faster, tightened restrictions on undocumented immigrants and added new provisions to encourage low-income families to keep private health insurance.
But now Bush and most of his party-mates in Congress are showing their true stripes. They're no longer trying to make themselves sound reasonable. Now they're just saying NO.
It's déjà veto. Bush has vowed again to veto the measure that would keep 6 million children from losing health care they already have and get another 4 million children the coverage they need. And Republicans in Congress who trashed the original bill because of what they considered excesses—you know, like helping children whose families can't afford to insure them—well, they continue to oppose even the revised bill.
This straightforward opposition is a step up from earlier tactics of blocking children's health care with outrageous claims and attacks on a 12-year-old child.
Falsely claiming the children’s health bill would cover kids in families making $83,000 a year was bad enough. But the right wing's coordinated attack on 12-year-old Graeme Frost, the victim of a devastating car accident who spoke out for the SCHIP bill, was revealing in its ruthlessness. It said far more about the Republican members of Congress and the extreme right bloggers and radio guys who carried it out than it did about Graeme and his family.
Using a child to block children's health care and not interested in the reality of this boy's life, they claimed the Frosts are undeserving fat cats. Yes, Graeme and his sister attend a private school—he's on a scholarship and his sister's tuition is covered by the state due to the brain injuries she received in the car accident. Yes, they live in a decent house—which they bought for $55,000 in 1991 when the neighborhood was seedier than it is today.
Let's look at the real reason the president and his supporters are fighting so hard to prevent kids from getting health insurance through SCHIP. Bush has said pretty clearly he wants to protect the market for private health insurers and not allow America to creep one inch nearer a health care system that is available to all.
It all comes down to dollars and cents—for the insurance companies. There are huge profits at stake: The insurance industry pulled down more than $15 billion in 2006 profits—a stunning 1,084 percent increase in five years. Insurance company stock prices jumped a whopping 500 percent between 1996 and 2006—which is great for healthy investors. And insurance company CEOs? Their average 2006 compensation was $8.7 million—which was dwarfed by the take of some of the really high fliers, like Aetna's Ronald Williams, who picked up more than $32 million just in 2006. You know the insurance industry will put plenty of money behind efforts to block anything that could rein in their profits.
The bottom line is this: Opponents can't win by attacking 12-year-olds, or spreading false claims about legislation or counting on the insurance industry.
We're going to keep passing legislation to insure those 10 million children until kids’ health care is renewed and expanded. And just as the opponents predict, we will use that as a first step to ensure that no one in this rich and powerful country has to go without health care.
We're not ashamed to be honest about what we want. We're proud of it.
