{"id":65,"date":"2007-09-10T23:56:23","date_gmt":"2007-09-11T04:56:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.kim.thewei.com\/20070910\/mr-bush-give-our-kids-better-health-care\/"},"modified":"2013-12-13T08:15:32","modified_gmt":"2013-12-13T13:15:32","slug":"mr-bush-give-our-kids-better-health-care","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thewei.com\/kimi\/mr-bush-give-our-kids-better-health-care\/","title":{"rendered":"Mr. Bush – give our kids better health care!"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

An Immoral Philosophy, by Paul Krugman<\/h3>\n

When a child is enrolled in the State Children\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Health Insurance Program (Schip), the positive results can be dramatic. For example, after asthmatic children are enrolled in Schip, the frequency of their attacks declines on average by 60 percent, and their likelihood of being hospitalized for the condition declines more than 70 percent.<\/p>\n

Regular care, in other words, makes a big difference. That\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s why Congressional Democrats, with support from many Republicans, are trying to expand Schip, which already provides essential medical care to millions of children, to cover millions of additional children who would otherwise lack health insurance.<\/p>\n

But President Bush says that access to care is no problem \u00e2\u20ac\u201d \u00e2\u20ac\u0153After all, you just go to an emergency room\u00e2\u20ac\u009d \u00e2\u20ac\u201d and, with the support of the Republican Congressional leadership, he\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s declared that he\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll veto any Schip expansion on \u00e2\u20ac\u0153philosophical\u00e2\u20ac\u009d grounds.<\/p>\n

It must be about philosophy, because it surely isn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t 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\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll spend in Iraq in the next four months. And it would be fully paid for by an increase in tobacco taxes.<\/p>\n

The House plan, which would cover more children, is more expensive, but it offsets Schip costs by reducing subsidies to Medicare Advantage \u00e2\u20ac\u201d a privatization scheme that pays insurance companies to provide coverage, and costs taxpayers 12 percent more per beneficiary than traditional Medicare.<\/p>\n

Strange to say, however, the administration, although determined to prevent any expansion of children\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s health care, is also dead set against any cut in Medicare Advantage payments.<\/p>\n

So what kind of philosophy says that it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s O.K. to subsidize insurance companies, but not to provide health care to children?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Jump to full New York Times<\/a> article or view it at Union Voice<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

An Immoral Philosophy, by Paul Krugman When a child is enrolled in the State Children\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Health Insurance Program (Schip), the positive results can be dramatic. For example, after asthmatic children are enrolled in Schip, the frequency of their attacks declines on average by 60 percent, and their likelihood of being hospitalized for the condition declines … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Mr. Bush – give our kids better health care!”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":28,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-65","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-all"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thewei.com\/kimi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thewei.com\/kimi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thewei.com\/kimi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thewei.com\/kimi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/28"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thewei.com\/kimi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=65"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/thewei.com\/kimi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4595,"href":"https:\/\/thewei.com\/kimi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65\/revisions\/4595"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thewei.com\/kimi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=65"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thewei.com\/kimi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=65"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thewei.com\/kimi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=65"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}