President Bush has vetoed health care for millions of uninsured kids — again. Millions of low-income kids will lose their health insurance unless the funding is renewed. The president is playing politics instead of helping sick kids. The new Democratic majority in Congress is working to fix our broken health care system — starting with our children — but President Bush and heavy-handed right-wing Republicans in Congress don’t want Democrats to get credit for this popular effort. How selfish but typical of Republicans. Republicans in this Congress are on track to block three times as much legislation as any Congress in history. And the White House has made a stunning 48 veto threats this year. The State Children’s Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) is an American success story — helping millions of uninsured kids get the care they need when they’re sick — while saving us all money by reducing emergency room visits. SCHIP started 10 years ago with bipartisan support. The vast majority of Americans — more than two out of every three — support the effort to insure millions of children who need health. Enough, already. Republicans hardly want to “help” anyone but themselves. JOHN IAVARONE Albany
N.Y. joins suit against feds over health care ALBANY — New York is joining several other states in suing the Bush administration over restrictions on health insurance coverage for children. New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer announced Thursday that New York has joined Illinois, Maryland and Washington in a lawsuit against the federal Department of Health and Human Services to challenge new rules governing the State Children’s Health Insurance Program. The states are seeking an injunction against new federal restrictions on eligibility and against a de facto limit on covering children from middle-income families who lack health insurance. Arizona, California, Connecticut, New Hampshire and New Mexico are also submitting friend of the court briefs in support of the action. New Jersey has filed a similar lawsuit. The new rules forbid states from providing health care unless the child has been without coverage for a year. The program covers 6.6 million children from modest-income families that aren’t poor enough to qualify for Medicaid. Congress this week passed a bill that would add $35 billion to the SCHIP over five years to expand health coverage for children in families that cannot afford to buy private health insurance. A steep increase in cigarette taxes would pay for it. President Bush vetoed the bill Wednesday. Bush argued the bill was too costly and took the program far beyond its original intent of helping the poor and would entice people with private insurance to switch to government coverage. He has proposed a $5 billion increase in funding. Pataki to lead climate task force ALBANY — Former New York Gov. George Pataki has been named co-chairman of a task force on global climate change for the influential, nonpartisan Council on Foreign Relations. He and Thomas Vilsack, the former governor of Iowa, will lead a task force of 30 people to examine the science, economics and politics of global warming and develop recommendations for turning the environmental problem into an economic opportunity. “I see this as an enormous opportunity for us to develop clean fuels and technology to develop more jobs and a stronger economy,” Pataki said Thursday. “I hope actually to develop priorities that will allow us to be part of the global climate change solution.” Pataki had much the same approach in his three terms as a Republican governor, when he was among the first high-profile executives to meld environmental protection with economic development. He permanently protected 1 million acres of open space from development during his terms, often while providing recreational facilities to attract more tourism to local communities. He also pushed research and funding for alternative fuels. Pataki, now a lawyer with the Manhattan law firm Chadbourne & Parke, has also been appointed by President Bush as one of three representatives to the United Nation’s General Assembly, where one of his tasks is to talk to foreign leaders about climate change.
Bush blind to crisis of children without health insurance
Officials of Schenectady’s Hometown Health Centers might want to send President Bush a copy of Friday’s Gazette story on the large increase in uninsured children that have been coming to the organization for treatment this year, contributing to its financial mess. Bush, who vetoed an expansion of the State Child Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) last week because he was unconvinced of the need, ought to be shown how severe that need really is, even in New York state, whose SCHIP eligibility requirements are among the most liberal in the country. In Friday’s story, HHC President/ CEO John Silva revealed that the number of uninsured children his organization saw tripled during the first nine months of the year. The soaring number of uninsured visits — by adults as well as children — combined with meager reimbursements from commercially insured patients, will likely produce a loss of at least $400,000 for the year, Silva says. As a result, he says the organization may not renew its contract to provide health care services at the county jail and may also close its satellite offi ce next to Ellis Hospital, which sees mostly elderly patients. Silva wants more money for the county jail contract, or at least some kind of commitment for a long-term, annual contribution from the county, similar to what was provided Proctors years ago; without it, the county may have to shop elsewhere (and pay more) for a health-care provider for the jail. The county’s finances are stretched at the moment and it’s not in much of a position to help out. Ditto the city. The state wouldn’t even help out Schenectady’s muchsmaller free medical clinic that was on the verge of closing a few months ago, so it’s hard to imagine much help coming from there. Around and around and around the health-care merry-go-round goes. Bush’s veto of SCHIP, unless overridden, will make it difficult for states to maintain their programs (New York’s is called Child Health Plus) even at current levels; and one of the president’s new eligibility rules would require a one-year waiting period for new coverage. This is bad news for providers like Schenectady’s Hometown Health Centers. It’s even worse for millions of American children.
Good to see the Oct. 8 Gazette editorial on Bush’s blindness to the crisis of children lacking health insurance. However, your news department neglected to report that on Oct. 4, there were hundreds of “Rallies for Kids HealthCare,” with tens of thousands of participants, all around the country — including Albany, Saratoga Springs, Hudson and Catskill. MoveOn.org members organized these rallies within one day of Bush’s veto of the State Children’s Health Insurance Program expansion bill, to thank representatives, like Michael McNulty and Kirsten Gillibrand, for supporting children’s health care, and demand Congress override this reckless veto. With over 3 million members (thousands in the Capital Region), MoveOn. org will continue to take to the streets, to voice our concerns about health care for all, getting out of Iraq, developing clean energy, restoring democracy and other critical issues. We thank your editorial department for speaking out, and hope that in the future your news department will not ignore grass-roots democracy in action. JOE SEEMAN Ballston Spa The writer is a volunteer regional coordinator for MoveOn.org.
Democrats vow to cover kids’ health needs WASHINGTON — House Democratic leaders said Sunday they were working to gather votes to override a veto on a popular children’s health program, but pledged to find a way to cover millions without insurance should their effort fail. At the same time, the White House sought to chide the Democratic-controlled Congress as the obstructionists in reauthorizing the State Children’s Health Insurance Program. It said Democrats were the ones who had shown unwillingness to compromise. Deputy press secretary Tony Fratto quoted President Bush as saying he is “willing to work with members of both parties from both houses” on the issue. In talk show interviews, Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Majority Leader Steny Hoyer did not dispute claims by Republican leaders that the GOP will have enough votes to sustain Bush’s veto when the House holds its override vote on Thursday. Pelosi and Hoyer promised to pass another bipartisan bill if needed.
Conservatives’ baseless attack on 12-year-old E.J. Dionne E.J. Dionne is a nationally syndicated columnist.
Conservatives claim to be in favor of stable families, small businesses, hard work, private schools, investment and homeownership. So why in the world are so many on the right attacking the family of Graeme Frost? Frost is the 12-year-old from Baltimore who delivered the Democrats’ reply to a radio address by President Bush in September. The seventh-grader pled — in vain, it turned out — that the president not veto Congress’ $35 billion expansion of the children’s health care program known as SCHIP. A car crash in December 2004 left two of Halsey and Bonnie Frost’s children comatose, Graeme with a brain stem injury and Gemma, his sister, with a cranial fracture. The kids were treated, thanks to SCHIP. The Frosts spoke out so the public would know that real people lie behind the acronym. Their reward was to be trashed on rightwing blogs and talk radio as if they were multimillionaires ripping off the system. The assault on the Frosts apparently began on the Free Republic Web site and quickly spread to National Review Online, Power Line and Michelle Malkin’s blog, as well as Rush Limbaugh’s radio show. And of what were the Frosts guilty? Well, they own their own home, which they bought for $55,000 in 1990 and is now worth about $260,000; they invested in a commercial property, valued at $160,000; Halsey Frost, a self-employed woodworker, once owned a small business that was dissolved in 1999; and Graeme attends a private school on scholarship. I rely here on facts reported last week in The Baltimore Sun and The New York Times, both of which set straight the more outlandish claims made by the Frosts’ attackers. The right is unapologetic. “The Democrats chose to outsource their airtime to a seventh-grader,” wrote National Review’s Mark Steyn. “If a political party is desperate enough to send a boy to do a man’s job, then the boy is fair game.” OK, the Democrats are “fair game,” but a 12-year-old? No wonder nobody talks about compassionate conservatism anymore. As a general rule, I am a fan of the blogosphere. It has broadened the public debate and brought new people into politics. And nasty stuff is by no means limited to the right-wing blogs. Left-of-center blogs whose political views I largely share have published offensive stuff, too. Shaun Mullen, who blogs at The Moderate Voice — yes, there are moderate blogs — is right to generalize when he says that the targeting of the Frost family reveals “the vicious underbelly of the blogosphere.” So rather than just condemn the rightwingers as meanies, let’s take their claims seriously. Doing so makes clear that they are engaged in a truly perverse and incoherent form of class warfare. The left is accused of all manner of sins related to covetousness and envy whenever it raises questions about who benefi ts from Bush’s tax cuts and mentions the yachts such folks might buy or the mansions they might own. But here is a family with modest possessions doing everything conservatives tell people they should do, and the right trashes them for getting help to buy health insurance for their children. Most conservatives favor governmentsupported vouchers that would help Graeme attend his private school, but here they turn around and criticize him for ... attending a private school. Federal money for private schools but not for health insurance? What’s the logic here? Conservatives endlessly praise risk-taking by entrepreneurs and would give big tax cuts to those who are most successful. But if a small-business person is struggling, he shouldn’t even think about applying for SCHIP. Conservatives who want to repeal the estate tax on large fortunes have cited stories — most of them never check out — about farmers having to sell their farms to pay inheritance taxes. But the implication of these attacks on the Frosts is that they are expected to sell their investment property to pay for health care. Why? Oh, yes, and conservatives tell us how much they love homeownership, and then assail the Frosts for having the nerve to own a home. I suppose they should have to sell that, too. The real issue here is whether uninsured families with earnings similar to the Frosts’ need government help to buy health coverage. With the average family policy in employer-provided plans now costing more than $12,000 annually — the price is usually higher for families trying to buy it on their own — the answer is plainly yes. All the conservative attacks on a boy from Baltimore who dared to speak out will not make this issue go away.
GOP poised to uphold Bush veto of child health bill WASHINGTON — Shrugging off a barrage of political attacks, House Republicans are on track to hand President Bush a victory this week by upholding his veto of legislation expanding children’s health coverage. To understand why, consider Utah, where Republican Sen. Orrin Hatch is an outspoken supporter of the measure — and the state’s two GOP House members oppose it. Rep. Rob Bishop called the vetoed bill a “dumb idea” for relying on higher tobacco taxes to pay for insuring children, a provision he said would create a need for new smokers. And Rep. Chris Cannon said that while he agrees with Hatch on one point, they part company on another. “This is a profoundly moral issue,” he said in an interview. “But that doesn’t mean the government should do it. Government isn’t very good at doing some things, mostly because of rigidity.”
I applaud The Daily Gazette for printing the Oct. 1 article, “Smoking poor tapped to pay for health plan.” I am angry that President Bush has opted to veto [the State Child Health Insurance Program]; perhaps he should consider the facts. In the United States each year, 440,000 people die from tobacco-related illnesses. These illnesses are preventable, and this law would help some of the individuals in our communities who smoke. Currently most smokers are from low socioeconomic and educational backgrounds, thus making them prime targets for the tobacco industry and their deceptive advertising essential to addict the unknowing. It is important to beware of the inarguable benefits of this law, including the benefits for smokers, nonsmokers and the children. The higher tax would be beneficial to all citizens one way or another. For smokers it would increase the tax on their daily addiction. Perhaps this would eventually encourage them to quit. This law would help nonsmokers, as the exposure to secondhand smoke would eventually decrease. The final, and perhaps most important, group would be the children, who would gain medical coverage through this bill. If we can provide our children with excellent health care, they will be on the right path for long, healthy lives. AMANDA HOOKER Albany The writer is the tobacco policy coordinator for the Capital Region BOCES’ Student Support Services Center.
Froma Harrop Why GOP is fighting so adamantly vs. SCHIP Froma Harrop is a nationally syndicated columnist.
Whether Graeme Frost has an affluent father or lives in a $400,000 house with granite counters is of no consequence to me. But such details have led a right-wing attack on the Democrats’ poster family for expanding the State Children’s Health Insurance Program, which President Bush vetoed. These charges happen to be untrue. The Frost family income is $45,000. Their Baltimore house, bought 17 years ago for $55,000, is now worth about $250,000, and the kitchen counters are concrete. But even if the counters were gold, I wouldn’t care. America needs a universal health-care plan that puts the rich and poor, young and old, sick and well into one big insurance pool. And whether the Frosts could sell their house and use the money to obtain health coverage is irrelevant. They tried to buy a policy, but insurers wouldn’t sell them one because of pre-existing medical conditions. Graeme and his sister suffer brain injuries from a car crash. The right does these issues on automatic pilot — and the left knows how to hit back — but the center feels conflicted. Megan McArdle, a blogger for The Atlantic magazine’s Website, worries about forcing families to sell assets to qualify for public health-care benefits. “On the other hand,” she writes, “many people, including me, don’t want to pay for the health care of someone so that they can stay in their Park Avenue mansion.” Honey, you already do. The taxpayers are footing the medical bills of many a Park Avenue swell over 65. There’s little means testing in Medicare, yet Bush pushed a drug benefit on top of the program’s already generous coverage. It will cost many times the price of SCHIP, even were it to cover the likes of Graeme Frost. So let’s discuss what the panic is really about. Republicans know that once government health coverage seeps up into the middle class, there’s no stopping it. Note how Bush does this big “compassionate conservative” thing about very much wanting SCHIP for poor people. Programs for the poor are fine, because you can always cut the living daylights out of them. Politicians who mess with middle class benefi ts find their heads in the return mail. The happiest campers in American health care today are the people in Medicare, a government-run program that sets prices. Middle-class families who taste similar fruits will not say: “Please, oh, please. Send my health coverage back into the exciting free market.” And their neighbors will ask, “Where can I get some?” As last stands go, issuing cries of injustice that an insured family making $40,000 might be asked to subsidize the health care of an uninsured family making $60,000 is neither heroic nor smart. The more rational response would be to let the folks making $40,000 also join the program — and require employers to raise their paychecks by the amount previously taken out for health coverage. Both the family and the bosses would come out ahead. Really, how did American workers become the last people in any industrialized democracy to be subject to such anxiety about paying for medical care? They already fund the health care of retirees, the poor, the disabled, convicts and government employees, including members of Congress. Their taxes pay for everyone’s health care except their own. Republicans can’t possibly believe that today’s expensive and chaotic mess of a health-care “system” is a “conservative” approach. They see their former business allies running into the arms of Democrats for deliverance from the unpredictable costs of insuring workers. Right-wingers, give it up! You’re fighting a battle you shouldn’t want to win. A country without universal coverage isn’t conservative. It’s primitive.
I applaud The Daily Gazette for printing the Oct. 1 article, “Smoking poor tapped to pay for health plan.” I am angry that President Bush has opted to veto [the State Child Health Insurance Program]; perhaps he should consider the facts. In the United States each year, 440,000 people die from tobacco-related illnesses. These illnesses are preventable, and this law would help some of the individuals in our communities who smoke. Currently most smokers are from low socioeconomic and educational backgrounds, thus making them prime targets for the tobacco industry and their deceptive advertising essential to addict the unknowing. It is important to beware of the inarguable benefits of this law, including the benefits for smokers, nonsmokers and the children. The higher tax would be beneficial to all citizens one way or another. For smokers it would increase the tax on their daily addiction. Perhaps this would eventually encourage them to quit. This law would help nonsmokers, as the exposure to secondhand smoke would eventually decrease. The final, and perhaps most important, group would be the children, who would gain medical coverage through this bill. If we can provide our children with excellent health care, they will be on the right path for long, healthy lives. AMANDA HOOKER Albany The writer is the tobacco policy coordinator for the Capital Region BOCES’ Student Support Services Center.
Well, Ms. Hooker, you could always contact your congressman and ask that he still push through (on a separate bill) an increase on the taxes on cigarettes. They're already planning a massive tax on cigars, and remember, cigarettes are just small cigars.
I think they just use the word 'cigar' as a front, most folks dont know that cigar-ette means small cigar (You had posted the definition earlier),,,,and GOD FORBID the leaders also educate...... .....they like to run it 'under the carpet' if you know what I mean.....it will carry over to large and small cigars....
...you are a product of your environment, your environment is a product of your priorities, your priorities are a product of you......
The replacement of morality and conscience with law produces a deadly paradox.
STOP BEING GOOD DEMOCRATS---STOP BEING GOOD REPUBLICANS--START BEING GOOD AMERICANS
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.....they like to run it 'under the carpet' if you know what I mean.....it will carry over to large and small cigars....
