Fighting over expanding healthcare for children — redux

July 19, 2007

Following up on an item from Monday, the president is going out of his way to aggressively state his opposition to expand healthcare access to 4 million kids through the popular, decade-old State Children’s Health Insurance Program (S-CHIP). Bush made his opinion clear during at event in Landover, Maryland, yesterday.

“I believe government cannot provide affordable health care. I believe it would cause — it would cause the quality of care to diminish. I believe there would be lines and rationing over time. If Congress continues to insist upon expanding health care through the S-CHIP program — which, by the way, would entail a huge tax increase for the American people — I’ll veto the bill.”

I’m afraid Bush is confused. First, the president may have forgotten, but the government provides affordable healthcare quite well — through Medicare, Medicaid, the VA, and S-CHIP. Was Bush inadvertently expressing his disapproval for these programs yesterday? Maybe someone ought to ask Tony Snow.

Second, expanding S-CHIP would not include “a huge tax increase for the American people.” Again, perhaps the president got befuddled by all this policy talk (he’s not a detail-oriented guy), but Congress hopes to expand access to healthcare for nearly 4 million children through a 61-cent increase in cigarette taxes. That is neither “huge” nor imposed on “the American people.” Perhaps the president misspoke.

And third, Bush’s principal opposition to the children’s healthcare program continues to have nothing to do with cost or effectiveness, and everything to do with his poorly-thought out philosophy. From yesterday’s speech: “Members of Congress have decided…to expand the program to include, in some cases, up to families earning $80,000 a year — which would cause people to drop their private insurance in order to be involved with a government insurance plan.”

Heaven forbid middle-class kinds get guaranteed access to healthcare through the government.

Keep in mind, the S-CHIP bill enjoys broad, bi-partisan support in Congress. It’s been endorsed by the American Hospital Association, the American Medical Association, and the American Cancer Society. Republican Sens. Chuck Grassley (Iowa) and Orrin Hatch (Utah) have implored the White House, publicly and privately, to lift his veto threat.

He won’t, because his ideology won’t let him.

“I support the initial intent of the program,” Bush said in an interview with The Washington Post after a factory tour and a discussion on health care with small-business owners in Landover. “My concern is that when you expand eligibility . . . you’re really beginning to open up an avenue for people to switch from private insurance to the government.”

Bush generally likes to talk about focusing on “what works” in government programs. He boasts that he cares about results more than process, and success more than ideology. For those millions of kids who would not get healthcare insurance under Bush’s approach, it’s a shame the president doesn’t mean a word of it.

“Heaven forbid middle-class kinds get guaranteed access to healthcare through the government.”

These kids need to learn to be good conservatives early on, and pull themselves up by their own bootstraps and get a job! Now, you say, how could a four-year-old get a job? The answer: Are there no workhouses, are there no sweatshops?

To paraphrase Dickens, Bush’s real response to healthcare for children should be:

“It’s not my business,” Bush returned. “It’s enough for a man to understand his own business, and not to interfere with other people’s. Mine occupies me constantly. Good afternoon, gentlemen!”

  • In some ways this is an even better issue than the war. Nearly all Rethugs in Congress have supported SCHIP. Unlike Iraq, where the polling has been up and down over time (creating cognitive dissonance issues for many Americans), health care for uninsured children has never, to my knowledge, polled poorly. Its one thing to beat up on Saddam Hussein to defend your warped ideology. It is another to go after the children.

    This issue is bumper-sticker simple. “SCHIP works, is cost effective, protects our children, and has bipartisan support. The only reason anyone would veto this bill is graft for big insuance companies.”

    Seriously – we can put the R’s in a bigger, better box with this than anything Bush has given us in his life. Run an up or down vote on this – stick with your crazy freak president or vote for the kids – and we may finally see actualy voting rebellion against Bush.

    Either Bush is an idiot, he no longer cares because of his lame duck status, or he has the worst political advisors in history (and no I have not ruled out combinations thereof.)

  • If government health care has such poor quality, with lines and waiting and so forth, wouldn’t folks making up to $80,000 choose to stick with superior private insurance?

    Or does Bush believe that quality is irrelevant and that price is the only factor?

  • These are born children, you silly people. In The World According to Bush, born children can be neglected, tried as adults and, if they’re unfortunate enough to have brown skin and live in the wrong country, they can be wounded, killed, or orphaned as collateral damage.

    It’s their fault for being born.

  • Hasn’t Bush been on one form or government provided health insurance, or another for virtually his whole life? Isn’t he now? Aren’t his children? His parents? His brother?

    Nobody should listen to a word this guy says. He’s a blathering drunk who needs a cab ride home.

  • Whether or not Bush is confused, conservatism is a depraved, unenlightened, anti-Christian(the good kind) idealogy that is in practice so unworkable that even it’s advocates dare not even try it. It’s real use is as a cover story for greed, privilige, and callousness.

  • Landover? T’aint nothing in Landover. When a pResident goes stumping for support in fricking Landover he is so done the fork will fall right through.

    you’re really beginning to open up an avenue for people to switch from private insurance to the government.

    Only if you private insurance sucks balls … oh.

    I think that statement shows you who BushBrat really supports. I wonder how many lobbyists for American health insurance companies have visited the White House recently?

  • “I believe government cannot provide affordable health care. I believe it would cause…” — Bush

    To borrow a line from the right’s high priest, “There you go again.” Bush “believes” a lot of things but as we’ve seen time and time again, believing doesn’t make it so. If he’d talk to people who actually “knew” something, he might not have to “believe” so much. And I might believe him.

  • Could he be any more of a dumbfuck?

    Bush, with his talking points and ideological parroting, has failed to think through the nature of healthcare costs. (Shocking, no?) On a value basis, insuring children is as good as it gets in this field, for somewhat the same reason that a new car is less likely to require a ton of money for repairs. What you’re paying for is maintenance–making sure kids get their shots, that when a toddler gets sick you can take her to the doctor rather than hoping the problem just goes away on its own, maybe some nutritional advice for moms less likely to find such information on their own.

    The cost sinkhole in healthcare is for the elderly, whom we’ve already committed to covering. Without pronouncing on the morality of that decision, it makes no sense on the economics.

    That said, I agree with zeitgeist at #2: this is a great issue for Democrats that would give them a fighting chance to overturn the fucker’s veto, for once.

  • “families earning $80,000 a year — which would cause people to drop their private insurance in order to be involved with a government insurance plan”

    Hmmmm. Maybe low cost government programs available to middle class American families would put pressure on the all powerful free market healthcare system to lower costs. Why is it that the government cannot offer options in a free market system?

  • Bush is also now completely flip-flopping on a positon he advocated in 2004, when he addressed the Republican National Convention :

    America’s children must also have a healthy start in life. In a new term, we will lead an aggressive effort to enroll millions of poor children who are eligible but not signed up for the government’s health insurance programs. We will not allow a lack of attention, or information, to stand between these children and the health care they need.

    I know the president is often full of shit, but this is more than egregious.

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