Posted by Damozel | What? Do you want private insurance companies to suffer? Well? Do you?
Besides: It's only his fourth veto since becoming president! Can't a "unitary executive" wield a little power on behalf of the insurance industry without taking a lot of flack from people who don't understand that funding health care for the children of people who can't/won't provide it themselves is the slippery slope leading downhill to socialized medicine? Huff Post covers the issue here.
Congressional Republicans are understandably nervous about this move, for which "[t]he White House sought as little attention as possible, with the president wielding his veto behind closed doors without any fanfare or news coverage." (HuffPost) Since I'm personally in favor of universal health care, end of, I naturally side with the bill's supporters, but---to be fair to W---his arguments for vetoing this strongly bipartisan measure makes perfect logical sense if you are completely out of touch with reality and with the cost of health care to parents and to young adults. His position: "the Democratic bill was too costly, took the program too far from its original intent of helping the poor, and would entice people now covered in the private sector to switch to government coverage. He wants only a $5 billion increase in funding." (HuffPost)
He also uttered the dreaded phrase "socialized medicine" The position of Democrats and Republicans who sponsored the bill: the "heir goal is to cover more of the millions of uninsured children and noting that the bill provides financial incentives for states to cover their lowest-income children first. Of the over 43 million people nationwide who lack health insurance, 9 percent, or over 6 million, are under 18 years old." (HuffPost)
An excellent July 30 op ed piece by Paul Krugman at The New York Times ("An Immoral Philosophy") speculates on the "philosophy" underlying the president's opposition to SCHIP.
President Bush says that access to care is no problem — “After all, you just go to an emergency room” — and, with the support of the Republican Congressional leadership, he’s declared that he’ll veto any Schip expansion on “philosophical” grounds.
It must be about philosophy, because it surely isn’t about cost. One of the plans Mr. Bush opposes, the one approved by an overwhelming bipartisan majority in the Senate Finance Committee, would cost less over the next five years than we’ll spend in Iraq in the next four months. And it would be fully paid for by an increase in tobacco taxes....
So what kind of philosophy says that it’s O.K. to subsidize insurance companies, but not to provide health care to children?(New York Times)
As Krugman explains, the "federalization" argument doesn't hold water... And he has a really, really cynical explanation for Bush's opposition to SCHIP.
[W]hy should Mr. Bush fear that insuring uninsured children would lead to a further “federalization” of health care, even though nothing like that is actually in either the Senate plan or the House plan? It’s not because he thinks the plans wouldn’t work. It’s because he’s afraid that they would. That is, he fears that voters, having seen how the government can help children, would ask why it can’t do the same for adults.
And there you have the core of Mr. Bush’s philosophy. He wants the public to believe that government is always the problem, never the solution. But it’s hard to convince people that government is always bad when they see it doing good things. So his philosophy says that the government must be prevented from solving problems, even if it can. In fact, the more good a proposed government program would do, the more fiercely it must be opposed.(New York Times)
It bothers me that this explanation, though so very cynical, makes visceral sense to me based on my own observations.
BACKSTORY:
House Minority Whip Roy Blunt is "confident" that the House will sustain the veto OR ELSE. (Actually he didn't say the last bit, but those guys aren't called "whips" for nothing.) Senate Minority Leader Trent Lott is hoping for a compromise. "We should not allow it to be expanded to higher and higher income levels, and to adults. This is about poor children," he said. "But we can work it out."
Why worry, Trent Lott? I'm sure you and House Minority Whip Roy Blunt can afford health care for your families.
All of which together kind of makes me wish John Edwards' plan could be implemented: as of 2009, cut off health care for President, Congress, and government appointees unless they've managed come up with a plan to cover everyone else. Hail, maybe Edwards has got it right. Let's shove that worn out, down-at-the-heel, flapping-soled shoe onto the other foot for a change. Let them see what it's like to worry whether they can afford to keep the summer home and pay for little Buffy's braces or Dad's treatment for prostate cancer. It still won't be the same, but it would at least ensure that they bring a less glib perspective to the discussion. Let them go to the emergency room because they waited too long to do something about that cough, hoping it would go away so they could make the payment on the Mercedes and still go to Martha's Vineyard for part of the summer.
The Huffington Post article noted out that Bush most first used his veto power to "blocked expanded federal research using embryonic stem cells last summer" because Jesus loves the little stem cells and every stem cell's sacred. But just because he's a stem cell hugger doesn't mean he thinks the little gits are entitled to health care if they happen to end up turning into babies that get born to feckless parents who aren't poor enough to qualify for SCHIP and don't bother to get health insurance to cover their children, or if they eventually turn into adult humans who can't afford to buy insurance and go to school or keep a roof over their heads.
Let's Not Provide Insurance for Poor Children at the Expense of Private Insurers!
The Cost of Health Care for the Seriously Ill: A Survivor Speaks to the Edwards Campaign.
LINKS
Bush Vetoes Child Health Insurance Plan (Huffington Post)
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