I Am Livid

Governor Perdue is offended, and I am livid. Yesterday, the PBS program "Now" shined a spotlight on the looming crisis for SCHIP, the federal program that under girds Georgia's PeachCare program and provides the working poor with access to affordable health insurance. (H/T to Trackboy1)

Enrollment in Georgia's PeachCare program has been frozen since March, waiting for the re- authorization of SCHIP. While Democrats in Congress want to continue or expand the SCHIP program, many GOP members, including some of our own, keep wringing their hands and saying the words "socialized medicine" over and over and over. And, the threat of a presidential veto looms.

What PBS did so well yesterday was to put a human face on the crisis, focusing on a single mother in McDonough and another Georgia family with a teen with Type I diabetes, over $900 a month in expenses and no way to pay for her medicine. The politicians in the piece, Gov. Perdue and Nathan Deal, played the game of pass the buck. Gov. Perdue, when asked what he would tell these families, initially replied that they needed to contact their congressman. When the interviewer suggested that would not get this teen the insulin she needs to sustain her life every day, Gov. Perdue actually said that he "took offense" at being asked to address the plight of a specific person. He takes "offense." And he won't be held responsible for that. When the health care debate happens around tables laden with $50 lunches bought by insurance company executives, the outcome is predictable. There, it is easy to ignore the real cost of failing to provide access, but we are talking about people's lives-children's' lives. The video is on the web, and well worth watching.

If aiding the children of the working poor by giving them a chance to buy health insurance at an affordable price is not the role of government, then I don't know what is. This debate over SCHIP is the tip of the iceberg. I believe that access to health care is quickly becoming the great civil rights issue of our time. What can be more basic to our civil liberties than the opportunity to survive and the the suggestion that income should not be the determining factor in whether or not someone has access that opportunity?

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