
{"id":2721,"date":"2008-06-05T06:26:35","date_gmt":"2008-06-05T14:26:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.carrborocitizen.com\/main\/?p=2721"},"modified":"2008-06-05T06:26:35","modified_gmt":"2008-06-05T14:26:35","slug":"senator-dole-vulnerable-on-children%e2%80%99s-health","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/2008\/06\/05\/senator-dole-vulnerable-on-children%e2%80%99s-health\/","title":{"rendered":"Senator Dole: Vulnerable on children\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s health"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em>By Adam Searing<\/em><\/p>\n<p>Two new statewide polls show a virtual tie in the race for U.S. Senate between incumbent Senator Elizabeth Dole and Democratic challenger Kay Hagan, a state senator from Greensboro. This is obviously sparking some worry over at the Dole campaign, where Dole\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s name recognition and millions in donations have perhaps made her a little overconfident about victory.<br \/>\n<!--more--><br \/>\nOne major worry for Dole is the widespread criticism of her vote last year against more affordable health insurance for children, or S-CHIP. Called \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Health Choice\u00e2\u20ac\u009d in North Carolina, this is an excellent, affordable health insurance program aimed at children in lower-income working families. It is becoming increasingly important as many in North Carolina are dealing with increasing healthcare costs, especially for family premiums.  Additionally, plant closings and tough economic times are putting good jobs with health coverage at risk.  In fact, North Carolina has one of the fastest growing rates of people losing health coverage through their employment.<\/p>\n<p>This increasingly dire situation might be expected to prompt Dole to reconsider her opposition to last year\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s bipartisan effort to lower health costs for kids in NC families.  Unfortunately, that is not the case. Recently, Dole introduced a child health bill that actually rolls back coverage in North Carolina, is incapable of drawing the bipartisan support needed for passage, and seems designed simply as a prop for her to mention on the campaign trail.<\/p>\n<p>Dole may argue that her bill funds some expansion of child health insurance and requires poor children to be funded first. However, last year she voted against bipartisan child health coverage twice \u00e2\u20ac\u201c and the second time against a compromise bill that clearly concentrated most of the new money coming to states on lower-income children. There are four major reasons why Dole\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s bill is a political band-aid in a year when families need real change:<\/p>\n<p>Dole\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s bill doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t treat our kids as she treats herself:  As a US Senator, Ms. Dole enjoys a wonderful choice of taxpayer-subsidized private health insurance plans for both herself and her family. She can also visit a well-staffed health clinic right in the Capitol building \u00e2\u20ac\u201d for free \u00e2\u20ac\u201d should she have a headache or otherwise feel ill. An entire floor of a nearby world-class government hospital is set aside for the exclusive use of Senator Dole and other members of Congress. In contrast, Dole\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s suggestions for how hundreds of thousands of uninsured children in \u00e2\u20ac\u0153her\u00e2\u20ac\u009d state are to obtain healthcare are inadequate, underfunded and far less than comprehensive. When will Sen. Dole be ready to provide the same healthcare she gets to every child in North Carolina?<\/p>\n<p>Dole\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s bill doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t even provide enough money to run the state\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s current Health Choice program: The nonpartisan Center on Budget and Policy Priorities estimates that we will fall short of federal funding for the program in 2013, meaning North Carolina would have to stop offering child health coverage or come up with millions in state dollars to keep the program open.<\/p>\n<p>Dole\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s bill blocks the state\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s new discount child health insurance plan for working families. North Carolina\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s new proposed discount health insurance plan for working parents who don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t qualify for Health Choice is called NC Kids\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 Care and was set to go into effect this year. Now it is delayed largely because of the defeat last year of new federal money for expanded health coverage \u00e2\u20ac\u201d a defeat Dole enthusiastically participated in. Dole\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s new face-saving proposal on child health just makes things worse.  She sets unreasonable and unrealistic participation requirements in the current NC Health Choice program coupled with inadequate funding for insuring new children, either in NC Health Choice or NC Kids\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 Care. Dole\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Catch 22 is this: To expand child health coverage, the state must enroll more children in Health Choice, but the state is not provided with enough new federal money to enroll more kids in Health Choice.<\/p>\n<p>Dole\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s bill would mean much less money for North Carolina: Under last year\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s bipartisan bill, North Carolina would have received hundreds of millions of dollars in new funding to deliver health coverage for kids currently eligible but not enrolled in state child health programs. Dole\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s bill \u00e2\u20ac\u201d even if it passed \u00e2\u20ac\u201d would do nothing to change this because the funding levels are so low they don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t even keep up with kids who are currently eligible for health coverage. <\/p>\n<p>Instead of a genuine, bipartisan effort to expand health coverage for kids and lower health costs for families, Dole instead delivers a partisan face-saving bill with little or no chance of passage.  This certainly isn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t the way to tackle one of the most important issues facing families in North Carolina.<br \/>\n<em><br \/>\nAdam Searing is the Director of the North Carolina Health Access Coalition.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>By Adam Searing Two new statewide polls show a virtual tie in the race for U.S. Senate between incumbent Senator Elizabeth Dole and Democratic challenger Kay Hagan, a state senator from Greensboro. This is obviously sparking some worry over at the Dole campaign, where Dole\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s name recognition and millions in donations have perhaps made her&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[242,243,244],"class_list":["post-2721","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-opinion","tag-elizabeth-dole","tag-healthcare","tag-insurance"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2721","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2721"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2721\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2721"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2721"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2721"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}