Just days before Senator McCain supported President Bush's veto of the legislation to renew and improve SCHIP, the Milken Institute released a study entitled, "An Unhealthy America: The Economic Burden of Chronic Disease: Charting a New Course to Save Lives and Increase Productivity and Economic Growth." The Study found that "the annual economic impact on the U.S. economy of the most common chronic diseases is more than $1 trillion, and could reach nearly $6 trillion by the middle of the century." They concluded, however, that "the impact is not inevitable: it is avoidable by improving treatment and prevention of chronic disease." For prevention and health promotion efforts to have their maximum health and economic benefit, it is essential to provide effective high quality health care services early in life to pregnant women, infants, children, and adolescents. "Any funding that we spend to prevent chronic disease today will actually be a valuable investment - with long-term dividends," said Dr. Richard H. Carmona, Chairperson of the Partnership to Fight Chronic Disease, and 17th U.S. Surgeon General, at the release of the Unhealthy America Study. Nobel Laureate James J. Heckman, the Henry Schultz Distinguished Service Professor of Economics at The University of Chicago, has documented the critical importance of providing health care to children to their success in school and life. Indeed, we must heed their warning!
Since its enactment, The State Children's Health Insurance Program has played a crucial role in helping to reduce the rate of uninsured low-income children over the past ten years from almost 23 percent in 1997 to 14 percent in 2005. SCHIP covers some 6.6 million children who would otherwise have been uninsured and in need of access to health care. All of this was done in a manner reflecting the particular needs of each State's unique demographics and eligibility determinations. The SCHIP reauthorization agreement was designed to target low-income uninsured children - those children living in working families having incomes too high to be eligible for Medicaid and too low for their parents to afford private family health coverage on their own or through employer-sponsored plans.
We must not only be accountable for passing the moral test of Government, prescribed by Hubert H. Humphrey, "how that Government treats those who are in the dawn of life, the children; those who are in the twilight of life, the elderly; and those who are in the shadows of life, the sick, the needy and the handicapped." But also the economic test so clearly presented in "An Unhealthy America," and "chart that new course to save lives and increase productivity and economic growth." In supporting President Bush's veto of SCHIP, Senator John McCain said the bill provided a "phony smoke and mirrors way of paying for it." At a recent meeting in New York City, philanthropist Eugene M. Lang, founder of the I Have a Dream Foundation and Project Pericles, and Presidential Medal of Freedom awardee and President George H.W. Bush "Point of Light" designee, expressed his profound dismay at the arguing about funding for SCHIP and delaying support for the much needed health care for America's children. Senator McCain, a vote for children is putting country first.
As parents we know the importance of healthy children; as pediatricians we know the importance of health care for children - to help them grow and prosper - to become productive adults. As public health practitioners we also know the importance of comprehensive health insurance coverage to prevent the untoward consequences of disease and promote the well being of children. Providing children and families with full access to high quality health care in a medical home is critical to secure a bright future for all of America's children and avoid both the human and capital costs if we fail to do so effectively. Healthy children now will secure our country's future and our economic health.
John McCain's "Vision for Health Care Reform" does not see children. Except for autism, indeed a critical concern, he makes no mention of the importance of and special needs of all children. Being born with low birthweight, for example, suffering from asthma, or serious emotional or behavioral difficulties and loosing valuable school days, or the consequences of overweight and obesity are only a few of the conditions, in addition to autism, demanding our immediate attention and remediated through prevention and high quality personal and public health care. We need a president who cares deeply about his country and its people, a president who will stand strong for all children and families, a president who has a vision that calls it right for children - Barack Obama. We need Barack Obama to be the next President of the United States of America for our children's sake.
Wrong call Senator McCain...
"Children first" is our patriotic duty; our country's future, depends on it.
Submitted to me by two concerned physicians:
Woodie Kessel, MD, MPH
Steven Shelov, MD, MS
October 30, 2008
Out with the Old, in with the NEW - Vote for Barack Obama!