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Frost’s mother, Bonnie, says, “You should explain to Graeme why you against expanding healthcare for kids, please don’t veto this bill.”

http://tinyurl.com/39tyl2

Among those lobbying for the program on Tuesday was Bonnie S. Frost of
Baltimore. Her daughter, Gemma, now 9, has been in the program for eight
years and received treatment for a traumatic brain injury after an auto
accident in 2004.

The money provided in the bill is $35 billion more than the current level
of spending and $30 billion more than Mr. Bush wanted.

To cover the cost, the bill relies on tobacco taxes, especially the
cigarette tax, which would be increased to $1 a pack, from the current 39
cents.

The bill would make the following changes in the children’s insurance
program:

¶Dental services would have to be covered. Mental illnesses would generally
be covered on a par with physical illnesses.

¶States could cover pregnant women with low incomes. The federal government
would reduce payments for coverage of parents and would gradually end
coverage of nonpregnant childless adults in the program.

¶Instead of directly providing coverage to children in low-income families,
states would have new incentives to subsidize premiums for private health
insurance offered by employers.

The bill stipulates that federal money cannot be used to provide health
benefits for illegal immigrants. But states could try to verify citizenship
by using Social Security numbers, without inspecting documents like birth
certificates and passports.

The compromise package would expand the $5 billion-a-year children’s health
insurance program by an average of $7 billion a year over the next five
years, for total funding of $60 billion over the period.

the measure would push children already
covered by private health insurance into publicly financed health care,
while creating an “entitlement” whose costs would ultimately outstrip the
money raised by the bill’s 61-cent increase in the federal tobacco tax.

it would move the nation toward “socialized
medicine,” ease access to Medicaid for illegal immigrants, and lavish
“pork-barrel” spending on a few lucky states and districts.

The bill’s fine print does raise indigent health-care reimbursements to
Tennessee and Hawaii, helps county-operated health facilities in
California’s Ventura and Merced counties, and boosts Michigan’s Medicaid
subsidies, a provision inserted by House Energy and Commerce Chairman John
D. Dingell (D-Mich.).

Rep. Rahm Emanuel (Ill.), chairman of the House
Democratic Caucus, contrasted Bush’s opposition to the bill with the
hundreds of billions of dollars the administration has sought to fund the
war in Iraq.

“It’s about the priorities, and the president has told us his priorities,”
Emanuel said.

“It’s no surprise the president finds himself isolated,” Emanuel said at a
Democratic event that included a Maryland mother who relied on SCHIP
coverage when two of her children were badly injured in a car wreck.

Eight Democrats opposed the bill. Some, from tobacco-growing districts,
object to raising the federal cigarette tax to $1 a pack, a 61-cent
increase. Some Hispanic members complained that the bill would make legal
immigrant children wait five years to qualify for SCHIP, but voted for it
anyway.

Under
the expansion proposal, states could seek federal waivers to steer funds to
some families earning at least triple the official poverty-level income,
provided the states showed progress enrolling the main target: children in
families earning up to double the poverty rate

legislation could qualify some New York
families of four making about $83,000 a year, or four times the poverty
level