The March of Dimes poster children were accepted as a bonifide means of appeal, and using them was productive.
That this has a political connotation makes it different, but I’m not going down the road of how different, when different, who different or to what degree different.
Other people can thrash that out.

Since that’s no longer true, and insurance companies cut services and staff to increase profit, regardless of consequences, the public can’t play by old rules either, if they want to survive

It’s a terrible atmosphere all around, and more and more of the thoughtful among businessmen are beginning to voice warnings about a colaapse of societies that don’t keep a proper balance and dierection in their economy.

Our economy is terribly askew, and a severe backlash is in the wind.
The isolationist reaction to trade, for example, is backlash to not managing trade properly. That’s just the first warning bell.

We have these type of bills because services are not delivered in the traditional manner.
All arguments based on yesterday’s economic and business models are obsolete.

Since no one is addressing the root causes. We need to do what we can to plug holes in that which is destroying the lives of an increasingly large sector of society. Not doing it is liable to have much worse consequences.

Using a child may be sleezy, but in an ocean of sleeziness, I’m going on strike against wasting my time evaluating the relative sleeziness quotient of each new political incident.

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And DLS also claims

The insurers have long trodden “there” already; the issue here, of course, is that beneficiaries will leave the insurers (for subsidized public insurance).

Why is this incorrect? Because the only coverage that the insurance companies offer that individuals in this income level can afford might as well not exist. It takes a big chunk of the income of those who are anywhere near being poor and offers little in return. And never ever forget the insurance companies’ most valuable employees, the ones that dig around looking for ways to not pay on claims. The poor are not profitable if they have any health problems at all. And the only thing that private insurers are about is profit. When they can’t make a profit off of a customer they dump them. Never make the mistake of thinking that corporate medicine is about the patient.

The Democrats are going to go after this issue in 08, and with the GOP frontrunners decision to skip last night’s debate at Morgan State will easily make the Republicans look like bigotted monsters who only want to enrich themselves and their cronies. It will be a massacre.

The answer is that it is a large number, but as a fraction, with this program it’s on the lower end of the range, according to the CBO; it can be claimed to be a small fraction. “As good as can be expected” or something like that, without adding laws that make employer insurance coverage mandatory, “employer mandates” (or, for that matter, individual mandates, Hillary Clinton’s new “non-government program” solution to health care for all). The number of those switching from private to public insurance (at the possible expense of additional poor people who have no private insurance at all) is much smaller than those poor children who would additionally benefit from the program.

Why shouldn’t a fraction of it go to actually benefit our most vulnerable citizens- our kids??

The reason is because it’s not seen as a legitimate role of government, though enormous numbers believe that it is, and that fraction is growing all the time, especially if they see no other alternative.

Bridge to Nowhere, Iraq…those make it easier.

I disagree with him about the nature of the issue because the decision here is about both the role of government AND the people who are affected by a lack of government. If it’s just about the role of government, then it’s an open / shut case. Nobody wants bigger government. But people also want health care for their children.

Oh, that’s the central issue: Many are opposed to government health care for their children. I’ll also rush to concede that also the attitude toward having government provide health care for their children (and for themselves, too) continues to become more in favor of it the more frustrated or angry people get with insurers. With this bill, though, the proponents should be honest. It’s not as it was originally meant to be, helping the poor get health insurance for their kids. The scope is much more broad in this bill. Why not just offer Medicare for all children? They’re sneaker and more finely incrementalist than that in writing and passing this bill, but they obviously aren’t limiting themselves to helping the poor who are known to need help with insuring their children, which is how it is still being described by proponents.

About “crowd-out”? In addition to the CBO cost estimates, and the CBO report on S-CHIP (crowd-out is on page 21), you can read about crowd-out itself here (general; see appendix III for two S-CHIP studies), and about S-CHIP, proceed to here (a page with links to several reports). Sorry to say, I cannot find the testimony by Orszag but he says that the crowd-out is as low as can be expected; it could be worse.

The regressivity of the boost in tobacco taxes is obvious, as is that this is an expansion of the scope of this program, not merely offering more care to the same kinds of people that were helped before, and the expansion of scope of the program is what is opposed more than the additional expenditures.

Why shouldn’t a fraction of it go to actually benefit our most vulnerable citizens- our kids?? Investing in their health is a smart bet, as it will free up emergency rooms and offer preventative care to forestall more serious health problems that develop when families lack insurance. If it looks like there’s a huge number that are cancelling private policies, the numbers can be tinkered with.

What’s wrong with a federal expansion into health care where the markets fear to tread? Because in spite of the exaggeration of Bush and his loyalists the compromise bill that was agreed upon will do very little if anything to displace private insurers.

The insurers have long trodden “there” already; the issue here, of course, is that beneficiaries will leave the insurers (for subsidized public insurance).

It’s left to readers to check the details and know who is exaggerating, upward or downward: Approximately one-third (33 per cent according to the CBO) of the increase in beneficiaries will be people who switch from private to public insurance, not what people ordinarly consider a proportion that constitutes “very little, if anything,” or is seen as negligeable, or trivial.

All that can be argued in a positive sense about this is that such a crowd-out level is, also courtesy of CBO (Orzag), as low as can be expected with a program like S-CHIP. It could be worse, i.e., higher. (Two other studies in a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation publication I looked at gave estimated ranges of 38-77 per cent and 0-50 per cent.)

Where was he for 6 years when he never saw a spending bill loaded with pork that he wouldn’t sign???

Without the veto pen.

So I agree with DLS in my wariness of using children to make a political point and would rather the Dems did not move in that direction. I disagree with him about the nature of the issue because the decision here is about both the role of government AND the people who are affected by a lack of government. If it’s just about the role of government, then it’s an open / shut case. Nobody wants bigger government. But people also want health care for their children.

It’s like taxes. If you just ask people if they want more taxes, the answer is of course ‘no’. But they also want roads and a military, so now things become interesting. Of course it works the opposite way. If you just ask people if they want health care for their child, then everyone says ‘yes’, but if you ask them if they will pay higher taxes for it, the answer changes.

Dems should jump on it to show that Bush has no problem spending 200 billion a year on an endless war that was started by mistake, but develops a 11th hour conservative conscience when it comes to spending 6 or 7 billion on our kids healthcare. Where was he for 6 years when he never saw a spending bill loaded with pork that he wouldn’t sign???