{"id":1025,"date":"2007-12-30T09:59:09","date_gmt":"2007-12-30T13:59:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/2007\/12\/30\/bush-signs-schip\/"},"modified":"2007-12-30T12:15:00","modified_gmt":"2007-12-30T16:15:00","slug":"bush-signs-schip","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/?p=1025","title":{"rendered":"Bush signs SCHIP"},"content":{"rendered":"

With a lot less ceremony (read that: media frenzy) than his veto of the two previous SCHIP proposals Congress sent him, President Bush signed an extension of the current Children’s Health Insurance Program through March of 2009(AP\/Washington Times<\/a> link);<\/p>\n

President Bush yesterday signed legislation that extends a popular children’s health insurance program after twice vetoing attempts to expand it.<\/p>\n

Politically, the move was a victory for Mr. Bush, although Democrats say it will come back to hurt Republicans at the polls.<\/p>\n

The extension of the State Children’s Health Insurance Program is expected to provide states with enough money to cover those enrolled through March 2009. Mr. Bush and some Republican lawmakers say the program will still serve those who it should: children from families who earn too much to qualify for Medicaid but cannot afford private insurance.<\/p>\n

“We’re pleased that the program will be extended and that states can be certain of their funding,” White House spokesman Tony Fratto said.<\/p>\n

Yet many Democrats \u00e2\u20ac\u201d with help from some Republicans \u00e2\u20ac\u201d wanted to give the program a significant cash infusion and broaden coverage to an estimated 4 million children. They overwhelmingly supported a tobacco-tax increase to pay for the expansion.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The story neglects to mention that the “4 million children” that didn’t get covered in this bill were the children of parents who made enough money to buy health insurance. Maryland just raised their tobacco tax, and the federal government wanted to raise tobacco taxes to pay for the expanded coverage – how much do they think smokers will pay for cigarettes? When smokers quit, how do they plan to pay for their largesse? At least Bloomberg<\/a> comes clean;<\/p>\n

The law funds a 0.5 percent payment increase for six months to doctors who treat patients under the government’s Medicare and Medicaid plans, which provide health care to the elderly, disabled and poor. The legislation also maintains current funding for the State Children’s Health Insurance Program until March 31, 2009.<\/p>\n

Bush twice vetoed bills to increase SCHIP funding and boost enrollment to 10 million from about 6 million because he objected to moving more children into a government program rather than into private health insurance. Democrats, who control Congress, had sought to boost the program’s budget over five years by about $35 billion to $60 billion.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

When Bush vetoed the previous bills, it was front page news. Now that he’s signed it, the news is relegated to a wire story link in just about every newspaper. If the news services told the whole story, instead of the intellectually vacant “for the children” line, Republicans would be hailed as heroes holding the line against the socialists in the Democrat party.<\/p>\n

Spree at Wake Up, America <\/a>asks;<\/p>\n

Amazing to me how some politicians would have rather made it a short extension, risking the low incomes childrens health insurance in upcoming battles, simply to “use” the children as a political tool in the 2008 elections.<\/p>\n

How sick is that?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Well, Spree, we’ve become accustomed to knee jerk neoliberals manufacturing issues that distract from reality, aren’t we?<\/p>\n

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With a lot less ceremony (read that: media frenzy) than his veto of the two previous … Bush signs SCHIP<\/span>Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,5,13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1025","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-media","category-politics","category-society"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1025","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1025"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1025\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1025"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1025"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1025"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}