To pay for this bill a 61 cent a pack tax has been added to cigarettes. (Just an aside here: Isn’t it ironic that the cigarette tax will hit the groups it is meant to cover harder than any other since low income individuals, adult, teens and even children are the heaviest smokers in the country.)

The bill calls for $35 billion dollars this year, but we all know it will not stay in that range. Medical costs have historically inflated by double digits since the mid 1960’s. There is another irony in this particular bill: Our government has already committed our great-grandchildren to pay the debt for our current profligate spending and now our legislators are working hard to extend the debt to the next generation. This bill is only creating another entitlement program that will become a monster.

Please remember that 40 per cent of the federal budget last year was for entitlement programs. That is almost half of the tax dollars collected from All Americans paying for the free ride of a relatively small number of Americans. And most of that money is for only two programs: Social Security and Medicare. Yes the old are getting a free ride, both the wealthy and the poor! And soon now as the Baby Boomers begin to retire the cost of Social Security will go sky high and the fund will be depleted soon after that. The fund will be depleted not because so much of Social Security is going for other programs as so many like to say, but because after just two and one half years all Social Security recipients have drawn out every cent they have put into the system and are at that point being paid money they did not contribute. They are  effectly on Welfare for the Elderly. This is rich and poor elderly alike since all get Social Security and free medical care.

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The bill passed in the House by 265 to 159 (45 of those votes were Republicans). President Bush has said he will veto the bill and I truly hope that he does so. He has been the most reluctant among presidents to use the veto to date. The Senate Democrats are working hard to get the 290 votes they need to send him a veto proof bill. There is some doubt that they can do this, but one can not trust to luck especially with an election year coming up and the Republicans know if they do not jump on the band wagon the Democrats will use this as a club to beat them with. It behooves the Republicans to then get the facts out to the people. To tell them and show them frankly what I have been trying to say for several years on this blog. The truth is that too many people are already on the government dole and our politicians are reluctant to tell the ones already on the take that they are sponging off the society. Every time a politician tries to get the truth out there those who are already in an entitlement program raise all kinds of Hell and the Socialist groups in the country such as the AARP starts the fireworks booming. Now we want to put middle class kids who are on their family’s healthcare policies on another government entitlement program. This has nothing to do with covering poor children who are already covered under Medicaid and the current SCHIP programs.

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Some Representatives have slipped in special “ear marks” for their territories and no doubt Senators will also. This special interest goody bag is part of the high tax payer cost of Medicare and Medicaid now as it is funded each year so do we really want to give the jackals another pot to raid?

“The bill's fine print does raise indigent health-care reimbursements to Tennessee and Hawaii, helps county-operated health facilities in California's Ventura and Merced counties, and boosts Michigan's Medicaid subsidies, a provision inserted by House Energy and Commerce Chairman John D. Dingell (D-Mich.).”

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What few know and the ones who do won’t admit is that SCHIP already covers children whose families private insurances policy have paid out the limit for traumatic illnesses. This is one of the main reasons supporters say the family eligibility income limit should be raise and children be allowed to be taken off of those family policies and put on SCHIP. They claim these children who have traumatic illnesses or disabilities have no coverage. These just are not the facts. But the Democrats didn’t let the facts stop them from bringing in a lady and her to ill children who are already in the SCHIP program to try to get the votes for and expansion of the program. Seeing these poor little children in need was sure to generate the right amount of public support for the expansion, you see.

“Briefly, there was a human face to the issue on Capitol Hill yesterday when Bonnie Frost, a Baltimore woman whose four children ages 9 to 14 have been enrolled in the program for eight years, appeared at a news conference with one of them, Gemma, 9, to support the bill.

When Gemma and her brother Graeme, 12, suffered traumatic brain injuries in a car accident in 2004, SCHIP made it possible for them to get the medical care that they needed, Frost said.”

This same thing was done in 1965 when 60% of the elderly had their own private insurance plans but they were ALL put on Medicare. We all know how that program has blown our medical system into the stratosphere with double digit inflation every years since making Health care the giant burden it now is to society. Think hard about that people: 60 percent of the older Americans in 1965 could afford and had their own health insurance coverage. At that time health insurance was affordable for middle and even lower income Americans, and most certainly by wealthier Americans. Inflationary cost increases for health insurance was in line with the inflation rate of most commodities at 1 to 3 per cent a year. Then along comes socialized medical care for the elderly and we have had a bonanza of gold coins flowing into the coffers of the health care industry. Remember the health care industry does not just mean doctors and hospitals. It means drugs and medical insurance too.

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