Sixty-one days since funding has expired for the Children’s Health Insurance Program, the brainchild of Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-UT). On Thursday, while debating the $1+ trillion tax cuts bill, Hatch said that the reason that it hasn’t been reauthorized is because we can’t afford the $14 billion it costs every year. Hatch needs to go to Texas and look Raquel Cruz in the eye and tell her that.
It’s been two months since inaction in Congress put health insurance for more than 400,000 Texas children in jeopardy, and for people like Raquel Cruz, the uncertainty is taking a toll.
“To remove insurance from hardworking people that need it and that use it is just —,” Cruz said, pausing as she sobbed. “It’s just not fair.”
Cruz, a single mother of three who lives in the Rio Grande Valley, has relied on the now-threatened Children's Health Insurance Program to cover her children's health care for more than 10 years. With two children currently benefiting from CHIP including a daughter about to go to college, Cruz fears what losing the program would mean for her family. [...]
“I’m going to be forced to look into the market and then possibly even get a second job, which will take me away from that time with my children,” Cruz said. “As a single mother, the whole load is on me.”
Texas has set December 22 as their deadline for notifying clients that the program will be ending—if Congress hasn’t passed the funding by then, that’s the Christmas greeting they’ll be sending.
Cancer treatments for Medicare patients? Expendable. Health insurance for 13 million people? Expendable. Health insurance for 9 million children? Expendable. Cutting the corporate tax rate permanently? Absolutely necessary.
They are all sociopathic monsters.
Jam the phone lines of House and Senate Republicans, but make the first call to Hatch. Call (202) 224-3121, and tell him to stop holding kids hostage and to pass a clean funding bill for CHIP and community health centers.