Smackdown Looms Over Kids' Health Care
Lawmakers are gearing up for a Congressional battle over a bill that would expand a program for uninsured kids in low-income families.
The bill would boost funding for the State Children's Health Insurance Program by $35 billion and raise federal cigarette taxes by 61 cents a pack to help pay for it.
The program provides health care for kids of low-income families who can't afford private health insurance, but who make too much to qualify for Medicaid (and the cut-off is waaaaay low, trust me). The proposal would add as many as 4 million kids to the 6 million-plus kids who are already covered.
President Bush says he'll veto the bill, calling it
an incremental step toward the goal of government run health care for every American.
Dems fired back. Sen. Richard Durbin, an Illinois Democrat, had this to say:
This president will not even blink when he sends us a bill in a week or so asking for $198 billion more dollars for the war in Iraq and yet he is unwilling to spend $6 billion for health insurance for children (each year).
I say, there's no reason to make this an either-or proposition. Why don't we simply export our poor to Iraq? Then we can give them free health care as a part of our hearts-and-minds campaign to win over the Iraqi population. It's a win-win all around.
Bush, Dems battle over kids' health care [Reuters]
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