Thread: Alert: House to Vote on 'Hillary-Care' for Kids, 1/14

Alert from Eagle Forum:
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House to Vote on 'Hillary-Care' for Kids!

January 13, 2009
The House is scheduled to vote on the reauthorization and expansion of the State Children's Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) on Wednesday, January 14th. The House will convene at 10:00 a.m. to begin legislative business, so your calls and emails are urgently needed!

Sponsored by Rep. Frank Pallone (D-NJ), the State Children's Health Insurance Program Reauthorization Act of 2009 (H.R. 2), would amend Title XXI of the Social Security Act to both reauthorize the program for the next five years and to expand the program to higher income families. If the bill is not reauthorized, SCHIP will expire on March 31, 2009. Because the Majority realizes that the American people do not want SCHIP to be expanded and remade into a universal entitlement program-basically a version of "Hillary-Care" for kids -- they kept secret the text of the bill until the afternoon before the scheduled vote. After a quick study of the language, the bill appears to contain the following problems:

**Promotes massive government-run health care at taxpayer's expense. H.R. 2 calls for a spending increase of over $50 billion above and beyond the current levels for the next five years.

**Increases taxes on working families by instituting a tobacco tax increase of 61 cents per pack. This tax increase -- an 156% spike in the price -- will hurt the low and middle-income families the hardest, while scape-goating only a certain segment of the American population (smokers) for using a legal product.

**Provides SCHIP benefits to adults, in addition to children. H.R. 2 allows for the treatment of "pregnant women" as children, rather than covering and providing for the treatment of the unborn child. The current program already covers an estimated 6 million children and this reauthorization is intended to extend coverage to an additional 4 million people.

**Cancels the requirement that participants in the SCHIP program provide documents verifying their citizenship. This opens to the door to fraud and targets populations such as illegal immigrants.

**Repeals the ban on legal immigrants from receiving federal health benefits during their first five years in the United States. The new provision gives the states the option to bypass the 5-year waiting period and provide coverage, placing U.S. citizens' eligibility on par with that of non-citizens'.

It is important to keep in mind that House Republicans created SCHIP back in 1997 in order to help needy children in low-income families. Today, congressional liberals have hijacked the program in order to further their goal of massively expanding government-run health care. President Bush twice vetoed previous attempts to massively expand SCHIP in 2007 and 2008.

Eagle Forum will keep you updated as more information and thorough analysis of this bill becomes available. Be sure to check back at the Eagle Forum website!

Please start calling your Representatives now and tell them to remove the tobacco tax, cut spending levels, and restore the immigration and verification provisions! This vote is planned for early Wednesday, January 14th!

From this article, this will be a thank you to La Raza and the Hispanic/Latino community for their support of Obama. Coverage of illegal aliens seems to still be possible as usual.

(quote)Hispanics embrace House SCHIP vote

By PATRICK O'CONNOR | 1/13/09 7:08 PM EST

Hispanic voters turned out in droves last fall to elect Barack Obama and his Democratic allies on Capitol Hill.

Those allies get their first chance to return the favor on Wednesday when the House takes up a children’s health care measure that would grant Medicaid coverage to children of new immigrants whose families came to the U.S. legally.

The immigration status of Treasury nominee Timothy Geithner’s former housekeeper might dominate the headlines, but this House vote has a much deeper impact on the country’s immigrant population and could set the tone for future debates.

“We really believe that this is the first opportunity for the president-elect and the Congress to demonstrate their commitment to the Latino community,â€

But Republicans paid a price at the polls last fall among Hispanic voters for hyping the illegal immigration issue.

I'm really disppointed in Politico's biased and lazy coverage of this issue. Research showed that immigration matters ranked low on Latinos' voting concerns (I think it was 4th or close to that) so how could "hyping the illegal immigration issue" have hurt Republicans. Furthermore, members of Tancredo's (and Bilbray's) Immigration Reform Caucus (IRC) fared better than their non-IRC counterparts.

I just heard the Speaker say that although there is nothing in the bill right now to cover illegal alien children and pregnant illegal alien women, there will be an amnedment added to cover these people. She said they didn't want to put it in yet . . . and I missed her reason why.


CALL YOUR REP AND TELL THEM NO HEALTH CARE FOR ILLEGAL ALIENS!

I should have posted this update here instead of starting new thread but did not see it...going to leave the other for now so we get more attention on this! Here is the update...


UPDATE: SCHIP Bill to be Voted On Today

by Connie Hair

01/14/2009
http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=30270


The State Childrens' Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) legislation is expected to be brought to the floor of the House of Representatives today by House Democrats. As of deadline, the full 285-page bill had not yet been given to Republican members. Some minority members on the House Ways & Means Committee had been allowed to read parts of it and are trying to piece together exactly what is in this monster of a bill. The conventional wisdom among Republicans is that it closely mirrors last year's SCHIP legislation that was vetoed by President George W. Bush.

UPDATE: HUMAN EVENTS received a summary of [HR-2], the SCHIP bill, from Dave Camp (R-Mich.), the ranking member of the House Ways and Means Committee, when it became available at 5:39 this morning. According to the summary released by Camp this morning, the bill would dilute the focus on America's poorest of children by opening SCHIP to the children of illegal aliens as the bill eliminates the identity-verification requirements in the current law and severely limits what states can do to attain proof of citizenship. The bill also removes the five-year waiting period legal residents are currently required to wait before enrolling in Medicaid or SCHIP. The bill does not include a cap on income for eligibility which would permit families making more than $80,000 eligible for coverage, whether American citizens or not.

SCHIP was originally intended to assist poor children with their health care requirements. Based on the latest information and language seen by Republicans, the bill would dilute the focus on America's poorest of children by opening SCHIP up to not only back door funding for the children of illegal aliens but would include adults making less than $80,000 per year, whether an American citizen or not.

Completely separate from finding some magical source of funding for President-elect Barack Obama's upcoming trillion-dollar spending bill that Democrats are trying to disguise as a "stimulus" package, the massive SCHIP bill will clearly require considerable tax increases. Democrats have left the program underfunded, and passage would require a substantial tax increase.

Rep. Dave Camp (R-Mich.), Republican ranking member on the House Ways & Means Committee, told me in an e-mail, "Shifting the focus away from poor children is bad enough. Playing a shell game with the program's funding and forcing every American to soon pay higher taxes just adds insult to injury."

Republican staffers tell HUMAN EVENTS that the extent of the success of a serious effort by some Democrats to further enlarge the scope of the SCHIP program -- thereby allowimg them to gain a foothold in their attempt to quickly socialize medicine -- remains to be thoroughly assessed when the entire bill is finally made available to all Republican members, hopefully before they're asked to vote on it today. The bill has been constructed by Democrats behind closed doors with little or no time afforded Republicans to scrutinize the entire bill.

Democrats proposed a 61 percent tax on cigarettes in a disingenuously absurd proposal to cover the enormous cost of the SCHIP program by increasing tobacco taxes. The main problem with this funding source is that smoking has been on the decline for decades. According to an analysis by the Heritage Foundation, the Democrats would need to recruit 22.4 million new smokers by 2017 to keep funding their Medicaid and SCHIP expansions. And as these funding sources continue to decline, like any government program, SCHIP will continue to grow exponentially. In 2007, SCHIP costs increased by 10 percent and in 2008 costs were up by18 percent.

When the decades-long trend away from smoking combined with the resulting decrease in revenue causes an enormous chasm between program spending and the revenue stream, Democrats will require the American taxpayer to fill that vast funding void. According to the Campaign for Tobacco Free Kids, the working poor are hit hardest by tobacco taxes since 28.8 percent of adults below the poverty level smoke, compared to only 20.3 percent of other adults.

According to the Centers for Disease Control, other groups disproportionately likely to smoke include: adults with a GED (46%), Native Americans (32%), adults without a high school diploma (27%), all blacks (23%), and young adults ages 18-24 (24%). In contrast, individuals with undergraduate degrees (only 10% of whom smoke) or graduate degrees (7%) would be far less likely to be affected. Given such data, it is hard to imagine a more regressive policy, disproportionately targeting such disadvantaged groups for higher taxes.

Smokers paying an additional 61 cents per pack of cigarettes to finance a SCHIP expansion under the Democrat proposal would cost a working class family with two adult smokers hundreds of dollars per year in additional federal tobacco taxes alone.

President-elect Barack Obama promised that folks making less than $250,000 per year would not see their taxes go up. This legislation most assuredly breaks that promise.

It passed the house so we better slam the Senate!

tinybobidaho wrote:

I just heard the Speaker say that although there is nothing in the bill right now to cover illegal alien children and pregnant illegal alien women, there will be an amnedment added to cover these people. She said they didn't want to put it in yet . . . and I missed her reason why.

I suspect the amendment wasn't added in the U.S. House of Representatives because it would have hurt the bills chance of passing. However, now that the bill has passed the House, it will go to the illegal alien loving U.S. Senate.

An amendment covering illegals will have a much better chance of passing in the Senate. Remember, it was the U.S. Senate that passed the Comprehensive Immigration Reform Act of 2006 (S. 2611), sponsored by Senator Arlen Specter in May 2006. After the recent elections, things really look bad for our cause in the U.S. Senate right now.

I'll guarantee you, any illegal alien favoring legislation that passes the House will meet little resistance in the Senate. I honestly believe you can take my words to the bank on the issue.

I suspect there will be more treachery and deceit in the U.S. Congress on the illegal alien issue during the Obama presidency than was experienced during the Bush presidency, much more.

To quote a line from an old BTO song: "You Ain't Seen Nothing Yet"

They didn't get enough bashing from Hitlery's HMO's? She needs to to stay out of the health care arena. She's too out of touch to be able to come up with anything feasible! I wouldn't want an auto mechanic doing surgery on my child. In the same vein, Hitlery needs to stay out of making decisions about things she knows nothing about.

The insurance we buy (and pay for) and insurance received through work, stops paying when a CHILD turns 18 or finishes high school. Some insurances will pay through age 23 IF the child is a full time college student.

So WHY should taxpayers have to pay for adults (to age 30 yet!!!) on what is SUPPOSED to be a child's health program????????

Update

By KEVIN FREKING | Associated Press Writer

7:36 PM CST, January 14, 2009

WASHINGTON (AP) - Making a down payment on President-elect Barack Obama's promise of universal health coverage, the House voted overwhelmingly Wednesday to expand government-sponsored insurance to 4 million more children in working families with income too high to qualify for Medicaid.

Between 300,000 and 600,000 of the new enrollees could be non-citizen children of legal immigrants who have been in the country less than five years, a sticking point for some Senate Republicans who also will consider a similar bill.

Obama said he hoped the Senate acts with the "same sense of urgency so that it can be one of the first measures I sign into law when I am president."

"In this moment of crisis, ensuring that every child in America has access to affordable health care is not just good economic policy, but a moral obligation we hold as parents and citizens," he said.

Forty Republicans joined Democrats in passing the bill 289-139. Congress passed similar legislation in 2007 but it was vetoed both times by departing President George W. Bush.

The bill would raise the federal excise tax on cigarettes by 61 cents to $1 a pack to pay for the $32.3 billion cost of expanding the State Children's Health Insurance Program for the next 4 1/2 years. Other tobacco products would experience a comparable tax increase.

About 7 million children now get government-sponsored health care through SCHIP.

The Senate Finance Committee is scheduled to begin writing a similar bill Thursday. Democrats would like to send a House-Senate compromise to Obama for his signature in coming weeks as an early victory signifying the party's control of both the White House and Congress for the first time since 1994.

"This is only the beginning of the change we will achieve with our new president," said House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., who got a congratulatory call from Obama after the vote.

The Congressional Budget Office projected that nearly 83 percent of the 4.1 million uninsured children who would gain coverage are in families with incomes below current eligibility limits. About 700,000 children would gain coverage because their states broadened eligibility.

Most of the children who gain coverage live in families with incomes of less than twice the federal poverty level - $42,400 for a family of four, analysts said. However, some states have expanded their programs to cover families with more moderate incomes, as much as three times the federal poverty level - or $63,600 for a family of four.

Republicans pointed to budget office estimates that the bill would shift 2.4 million children currently with private coverage to government-provided care.

"The priority of SCHIP should always be to serve those children most in need of assistance, not subsidize those who already have access to private insurance," said Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif.

They also objected to the additional spending.

"The kids will have to pay through the nose for the things we are doing today," said Rep. Dan Burton, R-Ind. "We don't have the money to do all these things."

Democrats dismissed both arguments

"Forty days in Iraq equals over 10 million children in America insured for one year," Pelosi said. "We certainly can afford to do that."

Opponents also said the tobacco tax increase would not be enough to keep pace with the growing costs of health care. As a result, lawmakers down the road will have to cut children from the program or increase taxes. They said the latter option is more likely.

"The Democrats are blowing a giant cloud of smoke into the face of the American taxpayers, and I believe the impending tax increases that must come to cover this program will have us all in a severe coughing fit," said Rep. Dave Camp, R-Mich.

The bill would provide coverage for pregnant legal immigrants in addition their non-citizen children who entered the U.S. in the past five years.

Current law requires a five-year waiting period before legal immigrants become eligible for coverage under Medicaid and SCHIP. Supporters say expanding coverage would mean children could get treatment for acute conditions like asthma and diabetes so they were less likely to need care in an emergency room.

"These are not illegal immigrants. They are children who go to school, go to daycare with our children, our grandchildren," said Rep. Gene Green, D-Texas. "Those children ought to have health care."

Passage of the bill follows House votes last week on two labor bills that Democrats also hope to send to the White House this month. One was a response to a U.S. Supreme Court decision that put strict time limits on when a worker may sue an employer for pay discrimination and the other specifies that victims of pay discrimination may get compensatory and punitive damages in court.

The Senate was scheduled to begin debate Thursday on that first labor bill, named for Lilly Ledbetter, a former supervisor at a tire factory in Alabama who was denied compensation because she was not aware for years that she was receiving less pay than male co-workers.

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/poli ... 1971.story