Bush not in favor of Children’s Health Insurance Bill, uses Veto

For the seventh time in his tenure President Bush has used his veto power and this time he has rejected the expansion bill for the Children insurance scheme, saying that it is not focused in the right direction.

Since the Democrats have come to control the Congress, President Bush has used his veto power for the sixth time creating a very tense situation in the Congress. Children's health-care program which was forwarded by the Democrats and was also supported by many Republicans has again been vetoed by the American President.

"Because the Congress has chosen to send me an essentially identical bill that has the same problems as the flawed bill I previously vetoed. As a result, I cannot sign this legislation and I must veto this legislation too," President Bush wrote in a message to the House of Representatives.

"I continue to stand ready to work with the leaders of the Congress, on a bipartisan basis, to reauthorize the SCHIP program," he said in his message.

The Children’s Insurance covers around 6 million children and the new bill is aimed at increasing this number to about 10 million. The additional 4 million children are the ones who belong to low and moderate-income families which can’t afford the private health insurance but are also earn above the limit for the Medicaid health care program for the poor.

The proposal is to generate revenues by increasing the taxes on cigarettes and other tobacco products, like increasing the tax from 61 cents to $1 per pack of cigarettes.

"This is indeed a sad action for him to take, because so many children in our country need access to quality health care," said Nancy Pelosi, a California Democrat who is also the House of Representatives Speaker.

But Bush said the bill is not concerned with helping the poor people and in fact takes the country’s Health care system in a wrong direction. The funding will take the grants to the poor to a level that was never intended in our Health care system, he added. But he is ready to increase the budget for the government scheme by around 5 billion and to continue coverage for the 6 million children who are currently benefiting from it.

The bill would have provided $60 billion in funding for the State Children's Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) over five years as compared to the current $25 billion five-year grant to this program. Democrats think that the proposed $5 billion increase is not enough. They disagreed with the President's view that the new SCHIP would encourage families with private health insurance to come under the government scheme.

The Democrats are not planning to try to override the veto. In fact, they have plans to introduce temporary bill to make sure there are enough funds for those families whose children are covered until the end of the fiscal year on 30th September, so that at least they are insured.

But, Democrats are in no mood to put their foot down as they said they will keep pressing on with a larger bill to cover at least 10 million children.