Kids' Health Insurance on the Line

Statement

By JOHN F. KERRY and RICHARD E. NEAL

Today, Congress has an opportunity to right a wrong that threatens to rob millions of American children of the healthy start to life they deserve. We can and must override the President Bush's veto of crucial funding for children's healthcare.

Democrats, many Republicans and the vast majority of the American people agree that we must dramatically expand the State Children's Insurance Program (SCHIP), a wildly successful effort that currently provides quality health care to 6 million low-income children, including 91,000 here in Massachusetts.

Unfortunately, the president vetoed a bipartisan compromise to provide health insurance coverage to nearly 4 million more children from working-poor families - children who would otherwise remain left behind by our broken health-care system.

Today, the House of Representatives can join the Senate in overriding the president's veto and send a message to President Bush: This a simple test of priorities, and we must put kids first.

For years, as the Bush White House stood by, states crafted their own creative solutions to the health care crisis - and Massachusetts has been a national leader in this effort. Now, the president's hostility to a successful program threatens to derail the progress we've made here in Massachusetts.

The president's stubbornness could carry a serious price for Massachusetts families. Health insurance for close to 100,000 children is on the line, and we know what happens when children lack access to proper care: Minor conditions become costly chronic diseases and preventable illnesses can even claim the greatest cost - the life of a child. SCHIP has had an immeasurable impact on the lives of people like 9-year-old Alexsiana Lewis of Springfield, who was losing her vision from a rare eye disease. Alexsiana's mother Dedra lost her health insurance benefits when she cut back her hours to care for her daughter. "If I didn't have (SCHIP funded) Mass Health right now, my daughter would be blind," Dedra said. "We're really at the mercy of the politicians."

Nonetheless the president stands in lonely opposition to progress on children's health - flanked by a puny coalition of yes-men and radicals. The president's proposal does not even invest enough to cover the children currently on the SCHIP rolls. Make no mistake: under the president's plan, kids will be kicked off SCHIP, and they will go uninsured.

No child's health care should be held hostage by politicians - especially by a president's veto pen. Unfortunately, and stubbornly, this president has put SCHIP into the same category as stem-cell research and a new policy in Iraq: Things the American people desperately want but this president won't allow. Denying kids health care is not compassionate, it's not really conservative, and it sure isn't smart.

By vetoing this bill, a president who once told the American people, "I'm a uniter, not a divider" has finally made good on his promise: he's united 67 senators, a huge majority of Congress, 43 governors, the American Medical Association, the AARP, the HMO lobby, the labor unions and the vast, vast majority of the American people - and he's uniting them against his veto and for SCHIP.

America's families don't care where their insurance comes from - parents just want to make sure that when their kids get sick, they'll get the treatment they need. We want a government that puts kids first - but we'll settle for a president who doesn't insist on putting children's health last.

John F. Kerry is the junior senator of Massachusetts. Richard E. Neal is a member of the U.S. House of Representatives, representing Massachusetts' 2nd Congressional District.

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