Bush vetoes child health insurance plan

Apparently President Bush thinks it is:

"The President strongly supports SCHIP reauthorization and his 2008 budget proposed to increase SCHIP funding by $5 billion over five years. This is a 20 percent increase over current levels of funding."

- www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2007/09/20070921-6.html

 

I am not sure that number is accurate. There are some who can't afford it, and there are others who simply do not want to pay for it. Those who two different groups of people. Neither are denied medical care if they need it.

But this bill expanded health care to a large number of people and would shift the burden of healthcare away from people to government. It's not the federal government's job to provide healthcare for people.

 

Where do you get the idea that no is denied medical care?

Folks are turned away everyday from the docs office where I go, because they can't pay.

The only medical care you are 'gaurenteed' is life saving treatment in the event of an emergency. But you get an ear ache and head on over to our local emergency room and they will turn you out unless you have $70 in hand. The urgent care facility that was built to handle the patient load that the ER was having to handle (because of a doc shortage in our area and the fact that so many don't have a regular doc because they don't have insurance) expects the same payment!

There are two charity supported clinics in our county and both are overflowing with folk who genuinely can't afford care. Our poverty rate here is 17%. A third of our population lives in a household that makes less than $25,000. 63% of our population lives in a household that makes less than $50,000. Our median income in this state is $36,000. (info source here: http://www.census.gov/compendia/statab/tables/07s0687.xls )

Come on down and look around. You'll see people every day who lack basic medical care because they can't afford it. Good people. People who don't waste their money on cigarettes and alcohol.

You are not gaurenteed medical care in this country! Anyone who believes that has their head buried deep in the sand.

 

Precisely. You can be turned away until the condition becomes so complicated and life-threatening that the cost of treatment reaches into the thousands. The uninsured won't end up paying this, so someone has to eat the cost.

 

That is one of the most obvious false dilemmas I've ever seen.

Political philosophies are not limited to pro-tax and anti-tax.

 

I believe you may be mistaken.

ERs here are not even allowed to ask for money at all before treatment for any ailment.

Where do you live? Every county has at least one designated hospital to treat the indigent. I have been under the assumption that was the case everywhere.


And it is:

http://www.vdare.com/rubenstein/050616_nd.htm

June 16, 2005

National Data, By Edwin S. Rubenstein

EMTALA—Health Care Giveaway To Immigrants

Increase law enforcement efforts—and the influx of immigrants will increase.
Say what?
No, that wasn’t a misprint – not when the law in question is the Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act of 1985.
EMTALA requires that every emergency room in the country treat the uninsured for free. And, naturally, that includes immigrants and illegal aliens.
An "emergency," as defined by this statute, is any complaint brought to the ER, from hangovers to hangnails, from gunshot wounds to AIDS.

SNIP

Unlike the other laws affecting illegal aliens, EMTALA is vigorously enforced. Hospital ERs must have physicians available to them at all times from every department and specialty covered by the hospital. The Feds impose fines of up to $50,000 on any physician or hospital refusing to treat an ER patient—even when the attending physician examines and declares the patient’s illness or injury to be a non-emergency. Lawyers and special interest groups are granted more authority than doctors in these matters.

But even EMTALA can’t stop ERs from closing their doors completely, however. Uncompensated medical costs forced 84 California hospitals to close over the past decade.

 

Like MK, Our local hospital turns away folks for lack of payment also. Children are always admitted.
Unless it's the type of emergency where you are rushed in, you are required to register before admission and that's where they get you. If you have Kaiser as so many do here, and it's an emergency, often they can still hesitate (this happened to me). They made me wait until Kaiser approved my emergency visit (non-kaiser hospital) while I was having trouble breathing.

 

Wow, this is news to me as well. Here in NC a private doctors office or private hospital can turn you away for failure to pay for routine, non life threatening conditions but any hospital that participates in the Medicaid program must treat everyone who shows up. They can ask you to pay but if you are unwilling or unable to pay they have to treat you anyway. I thought that was the rule nationwide.

I have lived in TX, GA, and SC as well as NC and I have never heard of anyone being turned away because they refused to pay. When I volunteered at a hospital in SC I know they had the same rule because they complained about it all the time. It was not the patients unable to pay due to poverty that irritated them but those well above the poverty line who refused to pay. These are the same ones who could pay for insurance if they wanted to but choose not to because they know they cannot be turned away.

 

I will agree with you that the government has to get its hands on some dollars but the bottom line is the fewer dollars they get their hands on the smaller our government will be and the greater our individual freedom.

Right now over half of our American citizens are on some kind of government assistance or on the government payroll. If we refuse to give them the money our government would have to shrink. Other than defense and law enforcement what constitutional duties do you think our government has? It is not government's responsiblity to provide healthcare, agricultural subsidies, education, transportation, or retirement income. If it were up to me I would immediatley abolish most of our government including the biggest goverment pork pay off of them all, social security.

 

I agree for the most part. And I would make Congress part time.

 

I didn't say I knew how they were getting away with not treating folk, just that they do it. Even with, our local, Baptist supported hospital, is running a $7 million dollar deficit every year from folk who pay the first $70 and then can't or won't pay what's left.

In my own docs office I have seen them turn (new)patients away for lack of funds. They do send them up the street to fill out paper work for whatever they might qualify for, but lots of folk don't qualify for anything! A $30,000 a year paycheck, disqualifies you for most gov plans while also meaning, a lot of times, that your employer isn't providing insurance. Basic sick visits (for minor things like strep or an earache) is $65. I have insurance and only pay $20 of that cost and since my kids have been chronic and we've had to go to the doc once or twice a week (sometimes with 2 kids!) I know how that can add up. The Lord has blessed us to be able to pay for it, but it has been tough!

Of course this is Alabama. There are lots of fed regs that the feds leave to the states to enforce. It may be that is what is making the difference between availability of care between here and say, Texas.

You would turn us into a third world country? Those governments also don't provide the services you mention. While we have fundamental problems with the way some of our programs are administered, simply abolishing them would lead to anarchy.

 

Actually, most third world countries do have (strictly) regualted health care and most provide UniHC. In fact, according to an article in this month's Rolling Stone, reporter Matt Taibbi was lamenting that our health care supposedly lags behind that of Slovenia's. Slovenia's claim to fame is that they are very poor and very socialistic. Other 3rd worlders (or not so distant 3rd worlders) coughing up the cash include: Argentina, Brazil, Costa Rica, Chile, Cuba, Uruguay, India, Thailand, Bosnia, Coratia, Estonia, and Slovakia; others.

Personally, it doesn't make sense to me that private markets lead to anarchy. There will always be a great demand for medical treatment in any society: that isn't debatable. What is actually questionable is whether or not there will be an incentive to fill that demand.

 

Wow, that seems kind of high to me. What does everyone else pay? I have insurance and my copay is $10 for my family doctor and $20 if I have to go to a specialist. But if you have no insurance at all my doctor only charges $25 for an office visit. Now lab work can make that more.

 

Wouldn't we acknowledge that Rolling Stone is not a leading evaluator of medical services? Should we really believe that Slovenia has better health care than the US? I have been to some countries around the world, and been in some of their hospitals, and I would not want to be there for medical situations. When I recently had back surgery, I would not have traded the healthcare here for anywhere in the world. And I called my nuerosurgeon on Tuesday and had the surgery on Saturday. No long waiting periods and no hassle.

 

I agree with you and I agree with you. Look at my entire post:

I was simply pointing out that most 3rd worlders have socialistic healthcare. I was also pointing out liberal fantasy about govt. regulation.

 

Back to the topic for a moment:

http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=22710

EXCERPT

The fight in Washington over the State Children’s Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) is a classic example of the old adage, “No good deed goes unpunished.” Combine it with the Washington truism that, given the opportunity, Congress will mess up even the best program. This is the current state of affairs for our efforts to help needy children obtain proper healthcare.

How We Got Here

In the wake of President Bush’s veto, it’s important to look at how we reached this point.

A Republican Congress enacted the SCHIP program in 1997. I was the Senate’s majority leader then. SCHIP was intended to bridge the healthcare gap between truly poor children who qualified for Medicaid and those from working families who could obtain healthcare insurance through their parents’ employers. Our concern then as now was for the working poor. By definition, SCHIP was focused on those children whose parents couldn’t afford to purchase insurance individually and whose employers did not provide a family health insurance benefit.

As the current Congress approached the new fiscal year, the issue grew into a crisis. Instead of re-authorizing SCHIP with a funding increase to include those children eligible under the intended criteria, the Democratic majority in Congress proposed a broad expansion of SCHIP to include hundreds of thousands of adults as well as upper-income children already covered under private insurance. The price tag is more than double the current program—$35 billion for the expansion alone. In some states, families earning up to $83,000 a year would be eligible for this “low-income program.”

 

This was outrageous! Dems support insuring people with both insurance and ample cash. This even defeats their argument about necessity.