Night and Day

NY Times headline last night: White House Acts to Limit Health Plan for Children

NY Times headline this morning: New Rules May Limit Health Care Program Aiding Children

The links different addresses, but the articles are essentially the same. Thank heavens we have newspapers, the last great bastion for mainstream progressives.

The article describes how the Bush White House is trying to limit a state's right to manage healthcare for children. One technique is by requiring 95% enrollment for families at the state set income requirement. That just doesn't happen. When was the last time you heard of 95% of eligible voters voting.

The other techniques are just as telling. The director of the federal Center for Medicaid and State Operations, Dennis G. Smith, has requested that states charge copays and premiums approximating those of private plans, and wants a one year waiting period, to demonstrate lack of coverage, before a family receives healthcare.

These two paragraphs (from the first version of the shifting titled article) displays the hearts of these brave defenders against "socialized medicine":

As another precaution, Mr. Smith said, states wanting to cover children above 250 percent of the poverty level must show that “the number of children in the target population insured through private employers has not decreased by more than two percentage points over the prior five-year period.”

Two Republican senators, Charles E. Grassley of Iowa and Pat Roberts of Kansas, urged the Bush administration last week to deny New York’s request to cover children with family incomes up to four times the poverty level. The proposal, they said, violates the original intent of Congress, which wanted to focus on lower-income children.

So, state rights are important for all things LGBT, but not for anything that might threaten the pockets of private healthcare providers (i.e. Insurance industry lobbyists are working hard to fight any government provided healthcare).

I'll remember this move and the senators supporting it the next time, "what about the children?" is thrown about by conservatives. "The children" is always cover for protecting the industries that contribute to reelection campaigns.