Editorials Fault New Rules for Children’s Insurance
Two California newspapers on Thursday published editorials discussing new rules that would limit State Children's Health Insurance Program coverage to the lowest-income children, as well as the pending reauthorization of the program. Summaries appear below.
- Los Angeles Times: "Preventing poor children from seeing a doctor is politically unpopular and deeply immoral, which explains the Bush administration's attempt to hide its efforts to do precisely that," a Times editorial states. "Recognizing that even his threatened veto might not stop an expansion of the program because the Senate bill passed with a bipartisan, veto-proof majority, Bush is trying to sidestep Congress entirely" through the rules, the editorial states, adding, "When the House and Senate reconcile their SCHIP bills, they should legislate the Bush administration's clarifications into the trash bin" (Los Angeles Times, 8/23).
- San Francisco Chronicle: Neither Bush nor Congress should "allow this country's vulnerable children to get caught up" in the "ideological morass" over efforts to expand health insurance to more adults, a Chronicle editorial states. "Bush must back off his restrictions, and Congress must go forward with the Senate's bill" to expand SCHIP, the editorial states, adding, "Covering uninsured adults needs to be done, all right, but it needs to be done as part of a national program to overhaul our health care system," not "as part of a children's program" (San Francisco Chronicle, 8/23).