The Online Reflector

By Nicki Crisci
Opinion Editor

President George W. Bush is no stranger to ridicule from the American people, and with good reason. Recently he decided to veto the State Children’s Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) bill, adding fuel to the already smoldering tempers of Americans across the country.

Since 1997, SCHIP has helped to insure children across the United States. According to the National Conference of State Legislatures web site, http://ncsl.org, the program “provides healthcare to ‘targeted low-income children’ who are not eligible for Medicaid.”

SCHIP expired Sept. 30, requiring reauthorization by Congress for its continuation. The new proposed bill on SCHIP increased the amount of money that would be issued and tried to include higher income families. This required more funds to be added in order for the program to expand.

According to the National Public Radio Web site, http://npr.org, the House of Representatives voted to expand SCHIP from $25 billion to $35 billion over a course of five years, but Bush wanted only a $5 billion increase.

Bush is worried that increasing funding to the program and expanding SCHIP to include higher income families would bring America closer to, as the White House administration had stated, “federalizing healthcare.”

In Bush’s speech to Congress on Oct. 3, he said, “Our goal should be to move children who have no health insurance to private coverage—not to move children who already have private health insurance to government coverage.”

This train of thought should not be the forefront reasoning when it comes to overall healthcare for the public. Preserving the health of the future should be more important than worrying about which types of children should be saved.

Bush’s second problem is that SCHIP would take away from the Iraq war. The government is endangering millions of children’s lives by spending billions on the war in Iraq, but when it comes to helping American children at the cost of the possible “federalization” of healthcare, he won’t authorize any funds.

If Bush had allowed SCHIP to pass, the money to pay for the program would have partially come from cigarette taxes. The smoke inhaled through a smoker’s lungs could have helped support the cause of insuring children—a little twisted, but true.

In fact, according to USA Today, “Smokers would pay an extra 61 cents per pack to help insure around two million children.” With Bush’s veto, however, smokers can figuratively breathe easier knowing that their taxes will not go up anytime soon.

The main reason the bill should have been passed is for the children. The whole debate boils down to keeping the insurance for kids and providing it for millions more or taking it away and denying other children the chance to be insured.

Some parents can’t afford insurance for their children and they aren’t eligible for Medicaid. Without healthcare, medical problems in kids can go unnoticed until a possible trip to the emergency room, where it may be too late to fix the damage that has been done. SCHIP would have helped low-income families pay for the annual checkups that would otherwise have been unaffordable.

According to the Families USA web site, http:// familiesusa.org, over 6.6 million children were enrolled in the program. With the veto, 4 million of those children will now be uninsured. The Web site also indicates that in 2006, the program covered 133,696 children just in Indiana. How will such a devastating blow be remedied?

While Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi has argued that she will bring this case to Bush time and again, Bush’s veto on SCHIP can only be overruled by a two-thirds majority vote from the House of Representatives.

The American people can only hope that Bush will fund a program to save the lives of children instead of increasing funding to a war that takes lives.