According to an article by Marian Wright Edelman and John Kirsch (full cite below), President Obama is righting one egregious wrong of President Bush who vetoed S-CHIP two years ago by signing into passage S-CHIP. Unfortunately, much more is needed in order to include up to 6 million more "uncovered" children in America. Of that amount, 1.2 million of those children are African-Americans (14.8%)!
Hopefully, we will quickly move to the next phase of an "S-CHIP" and make the President's promise a reality.
In the old system, there was a gap between children covered with healthcare and senior citizens eligible for medicare. In short, those years between child and senior citizen projected to leave millions of Americans without insurance coverage.
This does not include the under-insured individual! This lack of coverage also meant an imbalance between the states in how many children go without medical coverage. For example, a child in one state can be coverd under the income guidelines while that same child would be eligible in another state in the same income brakcet. The goal is to cover all children in all states on the same playing field. Likewise, a family earning $40,000 in one state and being eligible for health coverage for their children, would not be eligible for children medical coverage in another state earning the same amount of income. The gap of inequality must be closed.
When a child has comprehensive health coverage, that child grows into an adult with comprehensive health coverage. Comprehensive health coverage is the difference of having a medical wellness prevention plan or the absence of one resulting in childhood illnesses and diseases turning into adult illnesses and diseases. Therefore, an untreated mental illness as a child creates a situation of an untreated mental illness as an adult. That also means that coverage should not stop at age 19 and then pick back up at age 65. The multitude of health problems increases in costs when this happens.
The Children's Defense Fund is strongly suggesting that healthcare be affordable and cover children across state borders with rules in place to assure that health insurance companies be prohibited from charging higher rates for coverage based on a person's health status or age including women during child-bearing age.
Do you believe that Americans should have a choice between public or private health coverage to assure everyone access to a health plan?
What about allowing the government to hold healthcare insurance providers accountable under stricter regulations? These are important elements up for debate in the President's health care reform plan. These are the main issues the American public must begin to understand and push political leaders to support a healthcare reform policy. A public health insurance policy will be the ultimate alternative to private insurance so that if a private insurance company through an employer is too costly, the employee can elect to purchase a public health insurance plan providing at least the basic healthcare. I believe the long-term benefit is that all children and adults will be covered by preventive health insurance and even if their family cannot afford the premiums. S-CHIP is "bridging" the way...
Read more about the Children's Defense Fund's support of S-CHIP at
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/marian-wrigh... Either way, be sure to hold your legislator accountable! You can learn who your Senator or Representative is in your state by simply visiting the website:
www.house.gov and clicking on your state.
(See also, The Afro-American Newspaper, Volume 116, No. 11, October 27, 2007;
http:www.npr.org, Nov. 1, 2007).
Agnes B. Levine
Author of: "Cooling Well Water: A Collection of Work By An African-American Bipolar Woman" ISBN 0975461206 -- COMING SOON...
Posted By: agnes levine
Tuesday, February 3rd 2009 at 9:24PM
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