Category — Healthcare

On October 25th, Col. Jill Morgenthaler of Des Plaines, a 30-year Army veteran and the Illinois Homeland Security Director, announced her candidacy for the Democratic nomination to unseat Peter Roskam in the 6th Congressional District. We don’t know Jill well yet but wish her luck in her efforts to provide a viable alternative to Roskam’s “rubber stamp” complicity in George Bush’s miserable Presidency and the Republican Party’s nightmarish vision of endless war abroad, and the end of civil liberties and a return us to the days of robber barrons and sweatshops at home.

On Thursday, 10/25/07, Peter Roskam demonstrated his continued opposition to providing health care to unserved Illinois children by voting against HR 3963, the Children’s Health Insurance Program Reauthorization Act. Contrary to the will of the majority of the American people, Roskam sided with President Bush in opposing the bill, presumably because it would use money better spent on wars and on tax cuts for the wealthy. Roskam also expressed fear that the measure might also, God forbid, provide health care to illegal alien children. This despite the bill’s specific provision against funding for non-legal residents (section 605). In Roskam’s view, I guess, it is better to provide care to no children rather than risk the possibility of unintentionally helping even one non-legal resident. Despite Roskam’s vote, the bill passed 265 to 159. After consideration by the Senate, the bill will go back to the President who will, no doubt, veto it again.

Today, Peter “Rubber Stamp” Roskam voted against overriding President Bush’s veto of H.R. 976, the Children’s Health Insurance Program Re-authorization Act. This came as no great surprise, given that it was the President’s desire that he do so and given that he had dutifully voted against the bill the first time around.

SCHIP, the State Children’s Health Insurance Program, overseen by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, provides funding to States to provide health insurance to children of families who can’t afford private health plans but whose incomes aren’t low enough to qualify them for Medicaid. The failed bill would have increased the funding for the program by $35 billion without adding to the federal budget deficit, the money for the increase coming from an increase in the federal tax on tobacco.

H.R.976 would have extended health care coverage to millions of presently uninsured children. President Bush has used a variety of specious arguments to prevent its passage and Roskam, as expected, has fallen in to step. FactCheck.org has done a good analysis of the false claims that Bush, Roskam and other Republicans have been making in an effort to defeat the bill, so there is no need to reattempt that here. The American Academy of Pediatrics produced a fact sheet that provides some clarification regarding the program’s implementation in Illinois.

Roskam has attempted to defend his stance, suggesting that the bill was irresponsible because it “does not maintain the intent of the original program – to cover children in need. Instead, it becomes an open-ended entitlement program where illegal immigrants have access to this taxpayer funded program.” Roskam instead joined with others to propose an extension of the current SCHIP funding by an additional 18 months saying that it “guarantees that Congress will be wise when it spends precious taxpayer dollars.”

What Roskam failed to note was that this dangerous bill had been endorsed by numerous radical organizations bent on destroying our American way of life - organizations as subversive as the American Hospital Association, America’s Health Insurance Plans, American Hospital Association, Healthcare Leadership Council, Blue Cross Blue Shield Association, Ascension Health, Kaiser Permanente, American Medical Association, Johnson & Johnson, Families USA, Federation of American Hospitals, American Academy of Family Physicians, UnitedHealth Group, Catholic Health Association, American Public Health Association, March of Dimes, National Association of Children’s Hospitals, and that most nefarious special interest group, the American Academy of Pediatrics.

Worse still, the bill was favored by a majority of Americans, and given their track record on Iraq it is clear that they can’t be trusted. Well thank God we still have faithful Republican’s like Roskam protecting our “precious taxpayer dollars” and standing firm against the armies of illegal alien children that threaten to overtake us.