Guaranteed Healthcare

No child left behind?  Congress reauthorized and expanded funding for the State Children's Health Insurance Program (SChip) which President Bush has threatened to veto, leaving millions of children with no health insurance and millions more underinsured.

Every now and then I wake up and think, WOW, I live in a great country.  But you know, there's just one thing:  access to health care is based on ability to pay, not on patient need.  As a nurse, this offends me deeply.  As a citizen of this country, I am morally outraged. 

President Bush has vowed to veto the SChip reauthorization because it represents, "an incremental step toward the goal of government-run health care," according to an article in today's Washington Post, BUSH'S UNHEALTHY VETO, by Sebastian Mallaby.  Mallaby eloquently reframes the debate and defends the role of government in providing social insurance.  http://www.washingtonpost.com/wpdyn/content/article/2007/09/30/AR2007093001035_pf.html

Bush is drifting along like a tumbling tumbleweed, out of touch with 2/3's of the American public and the Congress.  What a shame it is that eight states, including New York, Illinois, Maryland, California, Washington, Arizona, New Hampshire and New Jersey are backing a lawsuit to stop the Bush administration from imposing new rules that will force them to cut more children from the health insurance program. Arbitrarily changing eligibility leads to fragmentation of care and denies children the crucial benefit of having equal access to a stable medical home.     

So, kiddies, in the meantime, let's all go to the garage and get the clawhammer out of the tool box and smash our little individual piggy banks to bits and try to come up with enough change to pay for the medicine and treatment we need so we can feel better and go to school.  Better yet, let's take up a collection and send President Bush back to Sunday school.  About that veto?  Time to blow the dust off the cover of the book you placed your hand on, Mr. B, when you took the oath of office.  A reading from the Gospel of (the physician) Luke, Chapter 17:2 "It were better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and he cast into the sea, than that he should offend one of these little ones."     

No child left behind? "Our chief goal with SCHIP is to ensure that the poorest kids and those with no health insurance are placed at the front of the line," according to Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services spokesman Jeff Nelligan.  Oops, there it is!  About those lines; imagine the millions of children standing in line waiting to get into the classroom as the morning bell sounds, only to find access to education blocked by the playground bullies, Mr. & Mrs. Pay-to-Play.  Got lunch money?  Why no moral outrage when access to health care is blocked by political bullies?  Got campaign contributions from the insurance industry? A.K.A the golden meal ticket that keeps legislators, (from both sides of the aisle), from doing anything meaningful to reform our broken health care system.

Covering more children is certainly a good thing, but let's not stop there.  Ultimately, SChip is an example of an incremental reform that leaves a fragmented system of financing health care in place with a multitude of private insurers and public programs that will only result in failure to control health care costs.  It's time to throw the bullies and their insurance industry enforcers off campus.  With a single payer national health program we will affirm that we are indeed one nation that respects the dignity and values the worth of each person by providing equal access to all medically necessary health care.