It’s day 46 without Children’s Health funding, and Republicans are picking another Obamacare fight – By Joan McCarter (dailykos.com) / Nov 15 2017
It’s almost like Republicans are intending to go for broke on how many people they can force off of insurance in the shortest amount of time. First, there are the 9 million children in the CHIP program, about 25 million of whom get their care at community health centers—the programs that lost funding when Congress failed to pass it before it ran out on Sept. 30. That was 46 days ago.
Now there are the 13 million who could lose insurance in this latest plan to cut taxes for corporations and the very rich, the new, shiny object Sen. Orrin Hatch is rushing through his committee in an attempt to pass it before the resistance has a chance to kill it.
This is key, because Orrin Hatch is the guy who can get CHIP and community health center funding passed in a second—if he wants to exert his seniority and his influence. He’s got the bill all ready to go, and it’s a good one. He and Democratic Sen. Ron Wyden of Oregon have worked together for years on children’s health initiatives, and they worked out a very good bill this time, one that would guarantee funding for five years. But it’s nearing time when it will be too late to pass it, and when the funding will come too late for many states to be able to keep any children from losing their coverage.
All so they can take one more goddamned Obamacare repeal vote.
Jam the phone lines of House and Senate Republicans. Call (202) 224-3121, and tell them to stop holding kids hostage and to pass a clean funding bill for CHIP and community health centers.
PB/TK – I’d complain that Congress likes using people as extortion to get legislation passed, but in this case you really don’t hear too many members fighting/complaining about CHiP, it’s like they just don’t care or have agreed not to use kids as props
