Or At Least It Ought to Be
What's the connection between Bush's assholish attempt to deny health insurance to children and reproductive rights?
Glad you asked.
- The Congressional Budget Office found that increasing Medicaid access to contraception would save money--thereby offsetting Bush's oh-so-compassionate concerns about whether the richest nation in the world can afford to pay for sick kids to see the doctor.
- SCHIP (the State Children's Health Insurance Program) covers children up to the age of 18--which is obviously going to include teenage girls.
- Nonetheless, SCHIP only covers Abortion services . . . to save the life of the mother, or to terminate a pregnancy resulting from an act of rape or incest.
- According to the assholes at the Heritage Foundation,
State officials in Michigan, concerned that the law required SCHIP to fund contraception and sterilization services,amended Michigan's Title XXI State Plan to remove coverage for those services.
And finally, apparently [LIST]Hillary Clinton is not only saying that we need to make sure that reproductive health be part of any planned health care reform, but--for those of you who've forgotten or never realized--the very existence of the SCHIP came out of the work she did after her "failed" attempt at health care reform during her husband's first administration. (And yes, that's her taking credit for it--but don't worry, right wing nutjobs as well as lefties who support other Democratic candidates back this up.)
And now the latest news about poverty rates now includes information that further puts the lie to Bush's bullshit about not wanting to expand SCHIP to cover those above the poverty line.
The nation's poverty rate declined for the first time this decade, but the number of Americans without health insurance rose to a record high of 47 million in 2006, according to Census figures released today.
Children fared even worse. Last year 11.7 percent of youngsters under 18 years had no health insurance, up from 10.9 percent in 2005. The percentage of uninsured children has increased two years in a row after declining for at least five years, according to the Census data.
How is that possible?
"Despite SCHIP's earlier success in decreasing the number of uninsured children, their numbers have risen for the second straight year because of a decline in employer-based coverage."
So people are working harder, earning less
(The increase in this year's median household income appeared to be largely due to a jump in the number of people in each household taking on full-time jobs, rather than a rise in wages. In fact, earnings of both men and women declined by just over 1 percent.
The drop in the poverty rate from 12.6 percent in 2005 to 12.3 percent in 2006, meanwhile, was almost entirely driven by a decrease in poverty for those over 65),
and fewer jobs are offering health coverage.
HIllarycare--or fuck, any kind of national program, whether a single-payer system or nationalized hospitals--is starting to look pretty goddamn good, don't you think?
Bitch_PhD still isn't sure who she supports in the primary, but is pretty sure that Hillary's the best choice soley from a reproductive rights perspective.
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Comments
Morgan
SUICIDEGIRL
Illinois, USA
SEP 01, 2007 10:18 AM
pookaa
Cleveland, OH
December 2005
SEP 01, 2007 11:10 AM
Gringo
Spokane, WA
May 2006
SEP 01, 2007 11:19 AM
kaosmaker666
Batesville, AR
April 2006
SEP 02, 2007 08:35 PM
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