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Saturday, October 20, 2007

After the Failed SCHIP Override

As I suspected the override vote failed and the question becomes what will congressional leadership do now that the vote to override the veto of the SCHIP bill by President George W. Bush has failed.

Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi (D-Calf.) has vowed to stand firm in the eligibility criteria for those children to be served by this legislation. While some Republicans have been quoted as saying that the failed bill contained provisions which would have allowed children in families with incomes as high as $80,000 to qualify for this program and they could not support the bill with those provisions.

The other standard Republican refrain is something to the effect that this was another move by the Democrats to bring about socialized medicine and therefore they were not going to vote for the bill.

Some Democrats have countered by saying that the Republicans who did not vote for the bill were opposed to providing health care to children.

Meanwhile the program's enabling legislation has expired and the current public relation strategy by the Democrats and the Republicans is not helping congress pass and fund a continuation of a much needed program.

Children deserve a fair start in life and passing a bill to help ensure a child's access to health care should be a bi-partisan goal of our elected representatives.

Let's hope that reason will prevail, a compromise is reached and a veto proof bill is passed soon by congress.



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