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S-CHIP UPDATE: GOP LOSES ITS NERVE. Last week Republican senators pleaded with President Bush to accept the bipartisan plan to use cigarette taxes to finance an expansion of the State Children's Health Insurance Program to cover millions of uninsured kids. Today, The New York Times reports:
In an unexpected turn of events, the top two Republicans in the Senate, Mitch McConnell of Kentucky and Trent Lott of Mississippi, said they opposed a bipartisan bill that the Senate Finance Committee approved last week and would offer an alternative on the Senate floor. ...Top House Republicans objected to the House Democrats’ plan to finance their proposals, with increases in tobacco taxes and cuts in subsidies for private health plans serving older Americans on Medicare. Republicans say public coverage would in some cases replace private insurance.
“Dragging people out of private health insurance to put them into a government-run program is ‘Hillary care’ come back,” Mr. Boehner said, referring to the Clinton administration plan for universal coverage.
So the Republican leadership is now parroting back the same Bush claim of catastrophe for private insurers that Nancy Pelosi called false and "absolutely immoral" yesterday. The reason why we need this bill is because poor children don't have health insurance, not because they do and we want to transfer them to a government plan. And here comes the "Hillary care" panic flag. Looks like this fight really is shaping up into "spring training for universal health care."
--Dana Goldstein
COMMENTS (3)
“Dragging people out of private health insurance to put them into a government-run program is ‘Hillary care’ come back,”
This, in a nutshell, is why Hillary Clinton shouldn't be president: she drags too much baggage from disasters from the 1990s with her. Her name has been so demonized by the Right that they will use her as an excuse to gut all progressive change. Because "Hillary" is like a Medusa-stare: anything policy proposal it "looks at" is instantly turned to stone- i.e., not going anywhere legislatively. Have we learned nothing about language from Lakoff?
Posted by: belltower | July 25, 2007 9:42 AM
Well, aside from that, I still want to know about this funding that the government is giving to private businesses to pay for kids' healthcare. If that's true, then Bushie's criticism has some merit. Why should the government assume corporate benefits expenses? And doesn't that motivate them to depress salaries?
Or, is it a BS claim?
Posted by: Anonymous | July 25, 2007 1:40 PM
Cigarette smoking is a necessary evil for the mentally ill.. It corrects our neurotransmitters nd makes us stay sane. 90%of schizophrenics smokes as do 50-60% of bipolars. It is a medication and should not be taxed at all. We even should get our smokes at a discount as we do our pills. The mentally ill are the low income class of America and it is not fair to put the burden of middle class health care for children upon us. It should be the upper class that pays for this. There's no reason why not. If we die early it is a kindness of God due to natural causes really. After all, we didn't blow our heads off.
Posted by: Pat Mahan | August 5, 2007 9:36 AM