Health care should cover more children

 25 comment(s)  
 E-mail Story
 Print Story
  Share

 digg it!
 Facebook
 del.icio.us
Seed Newsvine
Fark It
Reddit

Text Size: 

Tools Sponsor

President Bush, who has presided over a mammoth increase in the national debt, now has promised to tighten federal spending by vetoing a bill to improve children’s health coverage.

Congress should refuse to be dissuaded.

Plans already have momentum in the Senate and the House to expand the successful State Children’s Health Insurance Program, which has provided medical coverage for children in families who have modest incomes but earn too much to qualify for Medicaid.

Both Democrat and Republican members of the Senate Finance Committee on a 17-4 vote earlier this month approved a plan that would provide coverage for another 3.2 million uninsured children. House Democrats are working on a bill that would expand the program even further.

Under both plans, the additional costs would be covered in large part by boosting the federal taxes on a package of cigarettes from 39 cents to $1. Health experts say the price increase would pay an additional health dividend by inducing more people to stop smoking.

The benefits of health coverage for children are well known. Without coverage, kids are more likely to lack preventative care and are sick more often. The effects are far-reaching. Routine checkups can detect vision and hearing problems that interfere with learning. Children who are sick more often do less well in school. Instead of being treated in doctor’s offices, uninsured children end up getting expensive care in emergency rooms.

In Nebraska, which has combined the SCHIP and Medicaid into a program known as Kid Connection, about 6.6 percent of children are uninsured, compared with the national average of just over 11 percent.

The expansion would be especially beneficial for the working poor. The advocacy group Families USA said that more than 88 percent of uninsured children live in homes in which at least one parent works.

Under the Senate plan, coverage could be expanded to more than 30,000 additional children in Nebraska, according to Families USA. Nebraska would receive more than $291 million in federal funds under the Senate plan, which would boost spending by $35 billion over five years.

President Bush’s opposition to the funds for children’s health coverage seems inconsistent with his enthusiasm for the prescription drug benefit that was passed earlier in his administration at a projected cost of more than $500 billion over 10 years.

Surely if the country can afford to spend hundreds of billions on health care for seniors, it can afford to spend more money on health coverage for children.