Republican S-CHIP Alternative 'For The Children'
Posted October 19th, 2007 by Da King
Now that Bush's veto of the Democrat's S-CHIP expansion has been upheld, and the Democrats have had their hissy fit on the floor of congress yesterday, with one highlight (lowlight) being nutjob Pete Stark (D-Cal) making absurd comments about Bush "killing innocent people for his own amusement", maybe now the Democrats can quit playing political games and a reauthorization of S-CHIP can be worked out. I'm pretty tired of the Dem's tactic of using families that are already covered under S-CHIP as human shields to prevent any real dialogue from taking place on the issue. This vote on the veto override should have taken place two weeks ago, but the Democrats wanted to play the 'Republicans hate children' card for all it was worth, so they delayed the vote. I can see why the Dems mantra for S-CHIP has been 'For The Children', because their behavior has been totally infantile.
Democrats were so busy calling Republicans mean and hateful, that they pretended not to notice that Republicans are announcing an alternative S-CHIP plan today. The tenets of the Republican plan follow:
- Reauthorize SCHIP for eligible children. The bill would continue to cover kids in families with incomes at or below 200% of the federal poverty level.
- Enact a child health care tax credit. Rather than putting more people on a government-run program, the bill would offer tax credits to families with incomes between 200% and 300% of the poverty level. This would cover the population targeted by liberals with their bill, but instead of forcing them to drop their current coverage, it would provide assistance to keep their current insurance plan.
- Adopt a "federalism" health-care initiative. The bill encourages greater experimentation at the state level to expand health-care coverage.
The idea of a health care tax credit is far preferable to signing up millions of kids into an expanded government program funded on the backs of smokers (the Democrat plan). A tax credit offsets the cost of health care insurance for working families, plus it puts worker's wages back in the hands of workers where they belong. The idea in health care is NOT to fill the government coffers and then have the government decide how to spend it. The idea is to make health care insurance affordable. The tax credit helps. I think it would be a good idea if all health insurance and out-of-pocket medical payments were tax deductible. Hopefully, the Democrats will go along with this idea IF THEY CARE ABOUT THE CHILDREN, as they claim to. We'll see if they care about the children as much as they care about consolidating power unto themselves by taking all our money.
One more thing I should mention with all this 'Republicans hate children' crapola being thrown around by the Democrats regarding S-CHIP. The S-CHIP program was started in 1997 as part of the Balanced Budget Act. Two of the Act's three sponsors were Republicans (Gramm and Rudman. Hollings, a Democrat, was the other). The S-CHIP program was passed by THE REPUBLICAN CONGRESS, and then Clinton signed it into law. So, the next time you hear Democrats lying through their teeth about this issue, let them know you are onto them. The next time you hear the Democrat's propaganda arm, the mainstream media, distorting the truth, let them know too.
October 20th, 2007 at 12:48 am
Surely some of the liberals will have to come in squealing and howling about you suggesting that a compromise might be possible if Dems would just give in to this attempt at using politics to make the Republicans look as bad as possible.
It surely looks to me that the Republicans are being very truthful in their offer of a compromise. I bet that the Dems give in and go ahead with a compromise based on what the Republicans are offeing now that they have had a couple of weeks to try to convince people that Republicans hate childen, especially the children of middle class parents.
I wonder why the Dems never manage to admit that a Republican Congress passed the original S CHIP act but want so much to give all credit for it to President Clinton. Maybe I don't really wonder about that since that is a part of the game they play day after day in their attempt to fool the voters.
October 21st, 2007 at 7:02 pm
It's really comes down to a mental choice.
Conservatives, especially, are fond of choices. Except for a woman…. but I digress.
Todays' conservatives have made the choice in favor of 'for profit' health care. This choice includes wide disparity in access to, you know, actual health care. Conservatives have sided with the 'for profit' health insurance and big pharma corps. Profits are more important to conservatives than the health of Americans, including children's health.
In addition, today's conservatives aren't embarassed in the slightest over their choice. Speaking out in derogatory ways against families with children who need health coverage doesn't even phase today's conservatives. They are proud.
Naked shock capitalism is the choice today's Party of Lincoln has made. Laissez faire ideology, not Americans welfare, is today's conservatives default setting.
Note to King: Look at your solution. Tax deductions for buying 'for profit' health care or insurance. All you would create is a welfare system for 'for profit' insurers and big pharma.
Today's conservatives like welfare programs for big business, just not for, you know, needy people.
October 22nd, 2007 at 6:13 am
Rev, you old capitialism hater you. Why don't we just cut to the chase, eliminate all the 'for profit' industries, and institute those communist principles you seem to love so much across the board ? Look at all the money we'd save. NOT. We have all seen how great communism works wherever it has been tried. There's the mass murder, loss of civil rights, absence of free speech, and impoverishment of it's people. Yeah, Rev, you're really on the right track there. In order to fix america, you would destroy it. Brilliant.
If we never had profit in the health care industry, we wouldn't have anywhere near the technological wonders in health care that we have today.
But I do get a laugh out of your distortions. You act like conservatives invented the health care system we have today. You set up the straw man and then attempt to knock it down (and miss). Those conservatives you are referring to passed S-CHIP to begin with, or did you willingly choose to ignore that convenient truth, since it's inconvenient to your pack of lies ? Also, none of the Democratic frontrunner candidates are proposing to eliminate the private health insurance or pharmaceutical industries either, because even they aren't the fascist nazis that you are. I wonder why I don't hear you criticizing them EVER ?
Let's test your hypothesis that the government can run things better and cheaper. Let's look at that bastion of government socialism, the public school system. We spend more than any country in the world for education, and we don't teach our kids crap, especially the ones in the poorer areas. Private schools perform light years better. Yeah, let's model our health care industry on the failure of public education. No thanks.