Patricia Guadalupe Columnist

What does a child poor in this country have to do to obtain medical insurance? Seemingly to demolish a building, to be qualified like terrorist and envoy to Guantanamo, where there will receive accommodation, three daily meals, opportunity that of making exercise, and better care medical many Americans, quite paid for the American taxpayers. This week the Congress was trying to exceed the veto that the president Bush realized against a program with wide two-party support: the program of insurance of health for age minors in families that gain too much money to qualify under Medicaid, but very little to be able to pay a private medical insurance.

The democrats have wanted to extend the program known as SCHIP by his initials in English, to include more poor children, but the president Bush – the one who says to support the program - vetoed the legislation for considering her to be too costly. This, simultaneously that keeps on asking of the Congress – and hence, of the American taxpayer - for major funds for the war in Iraq. With what it wears out in Iraq in only several days, million children could receive the medical insurance that they need for an entire year. The rejection of the president Bush has caused enormous consternation inside its own party, because obviously one does not see very well that simultaneously who ask themselves for any more funds for a conflict that an increasing majority considers to be a lost case, him of the back to needy age minors.

So negative has been the reaction that the same president Bush has said that it would be ready to come to some agreement with the democrats, but the democratic majority says that they have already cut away everything what they are going to cut away of his proposal of enlargement of the program, and it is the president who has been to realize that for what he asks has not any sense.

Several legislators, including some republicans, circulate proposals to extend the program in different ways, but the fundamental problem is that from the beginning the president Bush has said that the only thing that he wants is that the program is destined to those who really need it, and that “wealthy families”, winning in some cases up to $ 80.000 annual, could take part in the program under the democratic plan. But what the first chief does not say is that these supposed “wealthy families” live in the expensive states like New York and New Jersey, where the cost of the medical insurance reaches sometimes approximately $ 20.000 annual, and even such families would have to ask for a governmental permission before being able to take part in the program. Governors of these and other states admit that many people of the middle class – the majority of the American people, certainly – simple and simply approximately $ 20,000 cannot finance in expenses of medical insurance.

The painful thing of all this is that this debate happens in one of the most developed nations of the world. A country that spends thousands of million dollars not only in wars without sound not ton, but in a sinnúmero of other programs, including subsidies for big corporations and assistance to farmers who do not need it. And we cannot forget that any enlargement of the program SCHIP still leaves out LEGAL immigrants. This foolery of leaving out the LEGAL immigrants was an idea of the administration Clinton that, like many politicians, turned out to be devastated by an antiimmigrant hysteria.

While one speaks and he debates on the war in Iraq, let's not forget that also here there is carried out a war, an act of terrorism against those who less can defend themselves: the children. What class of country are we when in Venezuela and Cuba one gives them better medical care to the youth?

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guadalupe@hwc-md.org