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I like children. I think it is our responsibility as adults to see that they are cared for. Children must depend on us for
shelter, food, education and health care. Well nurtured children grow up happier and healthier. When we cheat them of those
birthrights, everyone suffers.
Some numbers. Imagine ten children growing up in Arkansas. Four of those children live with parents who work at jobs
which include family health insurance as an employment benefit. Four of those children live in families who are so poor that
they qualify for Medicaid. How about those other two children? What do we do about them?
Their parents don't have jobs providing private insurance, but they make too much money to qualify for Medicaid. A bipartisan
bill supported strongly by both Democrats and Republicans would extend Medicaid to one of those uninsured children.
Susan Molina is the mother of these kinds of children. In her late 20's, her abusive husband walked out on her and her
two children. She worked two part-time jobs paying $8-9 an hour. No welfare. No food stamps. But when her child needed
dental work that she couldn't afford, she applied for Medicaid. She didn't qualify. She made too much money.
When SCHIP became available for mothers like her -- mothers who make between poverty and 200% of poverty -- her kids got
medical coverage. They needed it. Her son broke his arm and her daughter had a bad burn. Good care; no permanent harm.
They got back to school, and she got back to work without worrying about crippling medical debt. Thirty percent of bankruptcies
are health related, according to the academic journal Health Affairs.
Susan worked up the economic ladder to a new job. The good news -- it paid more. The bad news -- it paid her just above
200% of poverty. In Arkansas, that's just above $50,000 for a parent and two children. She looked into private insurance.
Prohibitively high; hundreds a month. For her, it was a choice between food and health insurance.
She tells about not taking her son to a doctor when he got a fever recently. Instead, generic chest rub and Motrin and
a prayer. She hopes nothing worse happens. (Susan's story is told by Adam Taylor on Sojourners Magazine's "God's Politics"
blog. It's like so many stories my wife could tell, but patient confidentiality prevents her. She is the director of the
Community Clinic at St. Francis House, our area's largest clinic for the uninsured and underserved. She sees daily the joy
of healing children and the tragedy of their neglect.)
There are 58,000 children like Susan's in Arkansas. A super-majority of the U.S. Senate and a strong majority of the
House would like to give Arkansas the opportunity to choose to cover them under our ARKids First program. That's the public
health insurance program that has been so successful at improving the health of our children. It's the program former Republican
Governor Mike Huckabee is so proud of.
But our President has vetoed the bill and our Representative John Boozman has positioned himself to support the veto.
They say it is too expensive. They don't like funding it with cigarette taxes.
Many studies show that limiting medical access leads poor people to postpone preventative care or early intervention for
health problems that later become chronic or severe. Chronic and severe is very expensive. In medicine, a stitch in time
saves nine. It is too expensive not to extend health care.
And if some people quit smoking because of the increased taxes, that can only decrease our public and private health costs
for smoking related illnesses.
I didn't mention that the opponents also played the race card. God forbid that any child whose parents brought them into
this country illegally should be allowed any form of public medical coverage. Actually the bipartisan bill has a new Social
Security Number verification alternative. But remember please. We're talking about children here. They don't have much
choice about being here. Isn't there any room for compassion?
I might be more sympathetic toward the "too expensive" critique if the people making it weren't the same people
driving our country's deficit to record levels. Mr. Bush inherited a budget with a $5 billion surplus from Bill Clinton.
Thanks to a millionaires' tax cut bill and other irresponsible spending, the federal budget has returned to the red-ink big-spending
of the pre-Clinton days.
And then there is spending that isn't part of the budget; like the war -- $459 billion and rising. But wait! There's
more. Another hidden cost is just now coming out from under the rug. The price of privatizing so much of the Iraq occupation.
There are nearly as many private contractors as military forces in Iraq. No-bid contracts pay these private contractors
$500 to $1,500 a day as compared with about $70 a day for our soldiers. Pretty soon the legal expenses may become astronomical
as we uncover abuses by mercenaries who are not subject to civilian law or the Uniform Code of Military Justice.
If they weren't so comfortable with spending hundreds of billions with little to show for it in Iraq, it might make their
concern over $35 billion for ten-million uninsured American children a little more palatable.
John Boozman's vote is one of the critical swing votes for this override. If you pray, pray that Representative Boozman
will do the right thing and vote to overturn this veto. If you care, call Representative Boozman's office (Washington: 202/225-4301;
local in Lowell 479/725-0400) and tell him to do the right thing.
It's for the kids. What would Jesus do?
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