By Governor Eliot Spitzer, Huffington Post
After months of negotiation and countless attempts at compromise, the Bush administration is still refusing to let New York and other states across the country expand their State Children’s Health Insurance Programs (SCHIP). The president is refusing to back down from destructive new rules his Administration has imposed – the sole purpose of which are to curb bi-partisan state efforts to insure more of our nation’s children.
The reason? As the president himself put it: “I mean, people have access to health care in America. They can just go to the emergency room.”
It is this politics of “not my problem” that has led to the health crisis we have today.
The bureaucratic barriers to coverage the Bush administration has imposed are not only fundamentally misguided, but also illegal.
I have an idea. Why doesn’t everyone who needs and receives “health care” from an emergency room send Mr. Bush the $1,500.00 bill? That’s what the physical exam, the lab work, blood work, and squirt of sterilized saline down the nose usually costs.
I mean, he has made himself ultimately responsible for our children’s lack of health insurance. Let HIM foot the bill for once. Here’s his address:
Mr. George Bush
The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue
NW Washington, DC 20500
Perhaps if he had to pay a few hundred thousand of them he’d want us to have insurance too.