SCHIP: Brown, Tubbs Jones, Ryan and Sutton Urge Veto Override

As Thursday' vote on overriding Bush's veto of the bipartisan State Childrens Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) expansion bill approaches, northeast Ohio federal legislators Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Avon), Rep. Stephanie Tubbs Jones (D-Cleveland), Rep. Tim Ryan (D-Niles), and Rep. Betty Sutton (D-Copley Township) held a press conference call this afternoon to urge people to call on their representatives to vote for children's health care.

Brown said that the "beauty of [SCHIP] is that it works." SCHIP passed ten years ago when the U.S. had a Democratic president and a Republican House and Senate, because "we knew that we had a problem where there were millions of uninsured children who had a little bit too much income to be eligible for Medicaid." He stressed that the expansion bill was a compromise reached in both chambers, and wished that before President Bush vetoed the bill he could have met some of the parents that the people on the call had met -- people who made just a little too much to qualify for Medicaid, or who made about $40,000 but have children with pre-existing medical conditions. The president says SCHIP is too expensive, "but it costs $7 billion a year, contrast that with the $2.5 billion we are spending in Iraq every week, and it tells you something about our priorities."

Tubbs Jones, who is on the Health Subcommittee of the House Ways and Means Committee, remarked that she had a hearing that morning about $34 million in net overpayments under the Medicare Advantage program. "For President Bush to say that he is being cost effective is outrageous," she said. "Here we have a program that could cover America's children, provide them with health insurance, but President Bush set up the Medicare Advantage program that is being significantly overpaid." She also said that SCHIP costs only $3.50 per day per child, and is one of the most cost-effective health insurance programs in the nation.

Tubbs Jones also chastised Bush for saying that lower income people can get health care in emergency rooms, and wondered when was the last time that the president has been in an emergency room and seen "people on gurneys, no privacy, people waiting to be seen, not enough nurses, not enough doctors .... this president is out of touch." She concluded by asking the media to "jump all over Bush, don't give him a break" on this issue. Children who are healthy do well in school, she said, and ultimately become great workers, and improve the work force.

Ryan said "I think we are clearly dealing with a president who is out of touch with what is happening in Ohio and in our Congressional districts." From saying after 9/11 that we should be shopping, to saying last week that young people should get health care in emergency rooms, he is out of touch with what average people want their government to be doing. "Here we have offered up something to do this, and he is clearly trying to block it," Ryan said.

Ryan also said he wanted to debunk the idea that SCHIP is socialism. The program was passed by a Republican house, so to argue that it is socialism you are saying that Newt Gingrich was passing socialist legislation. "That's crazy, and it doesn't make any sense," he said.

"There are many moral reasons why we need to do this, and why we need to act and act now," Ryan said. "We meet the families and see the kids, and we recognize the moral imperative that we do this." However, there is also an economic reason for SCHIP. "We now live in a country of 300 million people that is competing directly with billions of people around the world," he said. "If we don't have all of our people healthy and active and on the field playing for us in this brutally competitive global economy, we are not going to have the kind of success that we expect ourselves to have as a country." Kids need to be healthy to go to school and on to college, and scholarships and Pell grants mean nothing if the children are not healthy enough to study in school.

Sutton emphasized the bipartisan nature of the SCHIP expansion bill and criticized President Bush's idea of compromise, "which is to do it my way or don't do it at all." When Bush vetoed the bill he said that Congress passed it knowing that it would be vetoed. "But President Bush's approval is not a prerequisite for good government," Sutton said. "Our responsibility under Article I of the Constitution is to the people of this country, and we need all of the members of Congress to put that responsibility before their allegiance to this president." Sutton called SCHIP a "cost effective investment" and compared it to the half trillion dollars already spent in Iraq. Noting that President Bush has said we may be in Iraq for ten years, Sutton pointed out that the same children deprived of health care by Bush's veto might wind up fighting in Iraq within those ten years.