Bush oversteps authority and denies children health care

Yahoo article about the SCHIP veto

Presidential power lies in the executive branch, which makes the president the executer, the one who oversees that laws are being enforced, not a legislator, and while he is ultimately able to preside over whether a law is fair and viable, it isn't for him to strong arm Congress into submission by holding hostage important legislation.

That isn't just a symptom of the current administration, it's been something that has been going on for a long time, a way for the president to have some imput in laws being created. However, when a president starts issuing demands and is inflexible in his position, holding up the legislative process and strong arming Congress, that is a major step over the line. That is something President Bush has been guilty of almost since the beginning, and it has never been more apparent than it is right now. There is a large majority of both parties who want to pass the legislation for the children's health care bill, a bill he vetoed once already and required changes. This is the second veto, after they already made changes to the bill, and which he remains adamant that he get his way or that they need to meet impossible demands for him to compromise even a little.

This bill is incredibly important for helping to insure twice the number of children already provided for in the program. These are children whose families aren't poor enough for Medicaid but who cannot afford private insurance. The president's position is that it is a step back moving children from private insurance to public insurance but instead the government should be moving children from public to private insurance.

There are a number of very important issues threading through this argument and several major problems with the president's warped values regarding the economic disparity of those people who should pay and those people who actually can pay for private insurance. It is important in this whole debate to consider that the quality of care that people receive is very different from that of those who have comprehensive private insurance. There is quite a big difference as well between the care received at various levels of affordibility of co-pays, premiums and extraneous medical expenses. Not all insurances are equal and having been on public insurance I can attest to the fact that it is far better to have reliable and convenient access to a pharmacy, a general practitioner who is a qualified doctor rather than a student, and nursing staff that actually care about your welfare.

The economics of affordable health care among the families that may or may not qualify for the public insurance is never as easily defined as it seems in news articles and headlines. Anyone who has filled out FAFSA knows that the various forms of income and property that go into estimating a person's ability to pay for this or that can skip over huge factors that would qualify them for pay. Saying that a number of families make over the median doesn't account for the number of those families who live in cities with high costs of living. It also doesn't account for the families with one or more family members with managed health issues, which may include the child. Children with asthma have different needs than children without, so do children with diabetes, children with behavioral disorders or mental health issues, or children with learning disabilities or other disabilities whose parents may even make more than enough to pay for private insurance but whose insurers refuse to insure their child due to the risk level or financial cost of that child's care. If private insurers do decide to cover children with managed health care needs, how much of a premium will they charge? That factor or other cost of care issues are major contributors to even middle class or upper middle class families from being able to qualify or afford private insurance.

If the president wants to move more people from public health care to private, what is going to provide for that shift? It is already difficult enough for people to get health insurance through work. Even if they do work for a company that provides insurance options, the coverage options may be limited or the premiums will vary depending on those same factors of family health status as mentioned above. And then there are companies such as Walmart, who maintain a huge number of part-time employees so that they can provide a workforce for their stores without having to invest anything in employee benefits. A company's interest in providing health care isn't altruistic either. Businesses exist to make money and when a business provides health coverage, its primary purpose is driven by their desire for a healthy and efficient workforce. Perhaps the reason for taking a part-time position is because the family needs additional income, in which case it isn't likely that they would have extra to pay for rising health care costs, especially if they have multiple children or managed health care needs. If there are adults taking advantage of the program, why doesn't the president use a line-item veto instead of a full veto of the bill?

Probably the most central issue in the administrations position on the bill is the cost and its resultant rise in taxes. This could be easily remedied by reassessing the United States' military commitments around the world and not just in the Middle East but in regions like South Korea, African states, and former Yugoslavia. If taking money away from the Defense Department would weaken our military and take money away from already difficult salary and benefits budgets for enlisted soldiers and families, then that is only an even greater reason to reassess our commitments, our ability to spend, and question what is actually being done with the hundreds of billions of dollars in the Defense Budget. Also, isn't the health of millions of American children worth a raise in taxes? Why not address other issues at the same time and tax companies who have cut large numbers of jobs in the US only to export them to other countries to take advantage of cheaper labor and substandard regulation of required working conditions. That would punish companies having their products made by children in foreign sweatshops and provide health benefits for more Americans.

I feel like it is not too difficult to see a connection between the health and welfare of our American children and their success in education and becoming successful adults. As these things are interrelated and education is another area on which many people believe we should designate more money, it would seem to me that improving any conditions which have secondary effects on the education of children would be positive. Also, shouldn't every child receive the best quality health care no matter what amount of money their parents make? That's a question of values that seems to not have reached President Bush's deeply rooted respect for life.