Presenting two sides to the S-CHIP issue. We report. You all decide. And live with your choices without regard to how it all affects each and every one of us. And our children.

DO WHAT’S RIGHT FOR THE CHILDREN:

It’s September and that means it’s back to school for millions of children, and back to session for our Congress. There isn’t a healthcare advocate that I know who doesn’t realize that this session of Congress holds the healthcare and future welfare of almost 9 million children in their hands. It is a deeply disturbing fact that in this country, with all it’s wealth and innovation, we have children without access to consistent and comprehensive healthcare.

Many states have extended coverage to school-aged children through the States Children’s Health Insurance Program (S-CHIP). Yet there still are too many working families living in poverty or near poverty who can not afford health coverage.

Masschusetts is a state that has made covering kids a priority. But without a full appropriation of $50 billion, roughly 14,000 children in the Bay State will lose that coverage. Some of them were just covered by our health reform expansion, and now they are again in health insurance jeopardy. These are children living in families who earn between 250 – 300% FPL.

See here for how most Americans are living, in so called poverty.

More:

Without this funding for S-CHIP, chances are their parents will be in health insurance jeopardy as well.

That’s why late next week, hundreds of healthcare workers from SEIU Healthcare, traveling from many states across this country, will descend on Washington DC. They will go there to lobby members of Congress to keep their resolve and do the right thing by expanding funding of S-CHIP.

President Bush is waiting to veto this funding. He has already drawn a line in the sand. It is time for the voice of America’s children to be heard!

SEIU Healthcare workers from Jordan Hospital, Boston Medical Center and Union Hospital will advocate for our kids, bringing their petitions to add to the more than one million petition signatures that will be delivered to Congress.

Healthcare reform in Massachusetts will be forced to take a terrible step backward if the President vetoes this funding. In addition, as Massachusetts begins negotiating our new federal waiver to finance health reform, federal matching dollars may be at risk. The Bush administration may try to win these funding restrictions through rule-setting, holding our children and all of our reform efforts hostage to the Administration’s punitive policy.

And consider this:

Hospital CEOs and hospital workers, nursing home owners and nursing assistants all have this in common: we know that for healthcare reform to work, all of our kids must be insured!

If you haven’t signed the S-CHIP petition, please go to www.seiuhealthcare.org and sign it today. Do it for children throughout Massachusetts and throughout our country.

Celia Wcislo is a member of the Connector board
and Assistant Division Director, 1199 SEIU

The other side:

Every child in America should have access to health care. Thankfully, both the U.S. House and Senate have passed plans that would reauthorize and expand the federal Children’s Health Insurance Plan. But, funds to expand child health care should not come at the expense of America’s historical and fundamental commitment to our elderly. That’s exactly what happened in the House, where many members, including U.S. Rep. Charles W. Dent, were forced to choose between kids and the elderly when voting on House Bill 3162.

While the legislation contained the noble goal of expanding insurance for children, it also included many destructive components, including a provision to slash $2.7 billion in Medicare payments. Under that plan, nursing home residents in New Jersey and Pennsylvania would lose $210 million over five years.
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In Pennsylvania and New Jersey, where roughly 80 percent of nursing home residents have their care funded through Medicaid and Medicare, the cuts would hit especially hard and exacerbate an existing funding gap between what Medicaid will reimburse nursing homes for caring for residents. In Pennsylvania and New Jersey, where two out of three residents are funded through Medicaid, nursing homes lose an average of $13 and $21.25 per resident per day, respectively.
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While nursing homes will strive to provide quality health care no matter what funding cuts come their way, they will be forced to scale back those activities and events that enhance residents’ quality of life. In addition, those who work within America’s nursing homes — predominantly women and many minorities — could find their wages and benefits affected by the cuts proposed in House Bill 3162.

Nursing homes already are struggling to attract and retain staff to care for elderly, ill and disabled residents because these positions involve high physical and emotional stress on employees who can find higher compensation in competing health-care settings. Right now, 100,000 long-term care nurse and nurse aide jobs remain vacant nationwide; annual turnover rates are high — 49 percent for registered nurses and 71 percent for certified nursing assistants.

Slashing Medicare payments would complicate the challenges that already face each and every one of the more than 175,000 nursing home employees in New Jersey and Pennsylvania who work long, demanding hours to care for those least able to care for themselves.
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Sufficient funding of health-care services for children and the elderly is the only responsible solution. Playing off the future of children against the well-being of the elderly is not policy — it’s passing the buck.

Stuart H. Shapiro, M.D., is president and CEO of the Pennsylvania Health Care Association. Paul R. Langevin Jr. is president of the Health Care Association of New Jersey.

Have the unions such as SEIU fully investigated this issue? Are they aware of the serious cutbacks to our elderly if this act is extended as is?

So which is it? Who gets the cut? The children of families who earn 300% above the poverty threshold, or the elderly- and those who care for them in jobs working as CNA’s? You decide.