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“America’s children must also have a healthy start in life,” declared George W while running for president in 2004. He promised that he would “lead an aggressive effort to enroll millions of poor children who are eligible but not signed up for the government’s health insurance programs.”
Good Man, George! Way to go!
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But wait – three years later, George is now promising to veto a bipartisan bill that would renew SCHIP – the State Children’s Health Insurance Program that he was touting back then. Why? Because he says the bill would expand the program to four million children who’re not now covered. Yes, President George is presently promising to veto what candidate George had promised to achieve. Logic and integrity are not prized attributes in Bushworld.
What Bushworld does prize is laissez-faire dogma, the triumph of right-wing ideology over reality, including the reality of children going without health care in the richest nation in the world. But Bush the dogmatist even disputes reality. In a July speech to the Cleveland chamber of commerce, he assured the audience that the lack of health coverage really isn’t such a big deal: “I mean, people have access to health care in America,” George informed them. “After all, you just go to an emergency room.”
He’s not the quickest bunny in the litter, is he?
Bush is quick, however, to toe the corporate line. He says he’ll veto the SCHIP bill because it’s “aiming at encouraging more people to get on government health care.” Mustering all of the ideological bile within him, George declared public health care to be “wrong,” saying ” I’ll resist congress’s attempt to federalize medicine.”
So, Bush would simply ignore the needs of four million children who get no coverage under corporatized medicine, sacrificing them on the alter of corporate dogma. Of course, they’ve always got emergency rooms.
“The Waiting Game,” The New York Times, July 16, 2007
“Bush: No Deal On Children’s Health Plan,” www.washingtonpost.com, July 19, 2007
“Leavitt unwisely wants cuts in children’s health program,” www.thehill.com, June 8, 2007
“President Bush Visits Cleveland, Ohio,” www.whitehouse.gov, July 10, 2004