Kerry's "Kid's First" Act
Senator John Kerry has introduced legislation (S.114) to expand health coverage for the nation's children. The Boston Globe discusses the legislation and Kerry's strategies for passage.
Kerry said the bill fulfills a pledge he made on the campaign trail, where he vowed to make such legislation the first bill he'd file as president. He has signed up 300,000 ''citizen cosponsors," recruited via his campaign e-mail list. Kerry said he is planning to ''gin up energy" for his bill through speeches around the country.
I am pleased to be one of those citizen co-sponsors. Here is Senator Kerry's request for you to be one, too.
A summary of the bill can be found by following the links under the "'Kids First' Act" section of his Senate web page (scroll down a screen).Dear Friend,
Please join me in co-sponsoring the Kids Come First Act on johnkerry.com.
http://www.johnkerry.com/KidsFirstA sick child is always a worry. A sick child that you can't get help for is a parent's worst nightmare. Helping the 11 million children who have no health coverage isn't even on the radar screen of the Bush administration and the Republican leaders in Congress. But, we're going to put it there.
It is totally unacceptable that, in the greatest country in the world, millions of children are not getting the health care they need. That's why I have introduced the Kids Come First Act . Here's why it's so important to do something now:
- 1/4 of children are not fully up to date on their basic immunizations.
- 1/3 with chronic asthma do not get a prescription for medications they need.
- 1/2 of uninsured children have not had a well child visit in the past year.
- 1 in 6 has delayed or unmet medical needs.
- 1 in 5 has trouble accessing health care.
- 1 in 4 does not see a dentist annually.
- 1 in 3 had no health insurance during 2002 and 2003.
In the Senate, I am working hard to convince my colleagues to co-sponsor this vitally important bill. But, the most important co-sponsors - the ones who can help push this legislation through a Republican Congress and the Bush White House - are the hundreds of thousands of grassroots activists in the johnkerry.com community.
To date, over 470,000 Americans have signed our Kids Come First petition. We're closing in on our immediate goal of 500,000 before President Bush makes his State of the Union Address on Wednesday. We'll build from there until we stand one million strong. We've got to put getting our children the health care they need at the top of our national agenda. It won't be easy, but we will never relent until we find a way to put Kids First.
posted by Carolyn A. Parker @ 5:53 PM
2 Comments:
On the one hand, I would love to see every kid in this country recieve all the health care they need. There's horror story after horror story about children going without basic medical services.
On the other hand, I'm not sure that health care is a government guaranteed "right" that every citizen, including kids, is entitled to.
Well, dear heart, that's the thing about rights. They are pretty much what we say they are. If we think there should be a right to keep and bear arms, we say so and put it in a Bill of Rights. If we think there is a right to privacy, we say so, and, failing to find someplace to stick it in the Bill of Rights, just generally go to court at every available opportunity to protect and expand the right.
Same same with health care. Although we don't actually have to think of health care as a right to see that there is a very real and rational nexus between good health care for children and the good of the republic. Healthy children are children who are ready to learn, who are cheaper on the whole system because they're getting preventive care (before they show up in the emergency room with the creeping crud), and who support a healthier economy because parents will likely lose less time away from work with sick children.
And here's the kicker, I'm thinking. Whatever other government might have more or less second thoughts about health care for kids as a "right," surely the great American nation, based, as it loudly proclaims, on Christian values would "suffer the least of these my children," making sure that they had the basic necessities of life--including something for that damned runny nose.
I'm just sayin'.
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