S-CHIP Is About Denying Pregnant Women Health Care

There's an underreported side to the S-CHIP debate that was summarized brilliantly by Bitch Ph.D. the other day.

SCHIP covers children *and pregnant women*. Moving adults off it means not providing health care to pregnant women. Make sure that anyone you talk to about this knows that.

Culture of life, my mama ass.

The reason for this goes all the way back to the abortion debate and the fight to give unborn children full rights. The Republicans are now trying to have it both ways, calling for "moving adults off S-CHIP" when they specifically pushed for their inclusion before.

In 2002, when Republicans held the majority in the House, there was a big debate in the Congress over adding "unborn children" to the list of possible recipients for S-CHIP.

With momentum building in Congress in recent years in favor of such proposals, the Bush administration announced in February that it would take steps, in the words of Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy G. Thompson, to "enable states to make immediate use of the extensive funding already available under SCHIP to provide prenatal care for more low-income pregnant women and their babies."

The administration's chosen means to achieve this goal—deeming the fetus an "unborn child" eligible for benefits under the SCHIP law—raised immediate alarm bells within the reproductive health and public health communities about the administration's motivations behind the policy and its impact on the scope of care available to women. By conferring benefits only upon the unborn child, they said, the proposal unnecessarily injects abortion politics into the prenatal care debate in a way that will shortchange pregnant and postpartum women.

This was a divisive attempt to insert abortion politics into this program. The practical result was that the list of services offered to low-income pregnant mothers for reimbursement were only those that directly affected a fetus. There was an immediate outcry, and a bipartisan majority in Congress introduced several bills to extend S-CHIP coverage to pregnant women, with the children becoming eligible for the program after birth. Like Medicaid, the proposals would cover women for 60 days postpartum. By November 2002, the President offered what amounts to a fake loophole:

In November, it issued a guidance to state Medicaid directors indicating that those states that reimburse health care providers for the traditional package of pregnancy-related services (including prenatal care, delivery and postpartum care) through a single "bundled" payment may continue to do so. Only 28 states provide such a bundled payment, however, and such payments typically cover only "routine" care. Thus, even in those states, women will still be left to foot the bill for serious and costly medical complications.

This threading of the needle to include "unborn children" on the program but to exclude "pregnant women" is completely shameful. But states gradually started to work with the Administration to get minimum prenatal care covered under SCHIP. Here's a press release from June 2003 touting Illinois' plan to cover 41,000 pregnant women. Rhode Island and Michigan were the first. In all, 12 states, including California, Texas and Massachusetts, have added the "unborn child rule" into their S-CHIP plans. But they all largely worked around the issue through various maneuvers, reverting to the standards of the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists and the American Academy of Pediatrics that a pregnant woman and her child should be treated together.

This time around, with a Democratic majority, there was no way that pregnant women wouldn't be added into the eligible class. This is why the religious right opposed expanding S-CHIP immediately.

The new House bill changes the SCHIP program to cover health insurance for a "pregnant woman," rather than cover the child in the womb. This would undermine the "unborn child rule" and could possibly allow funding for abortions in those States that include abortion as part of their Medicaid health coverage for pregnant women.

This is the spectre they raise, but really the mandate here is to allow full medical care for poor pregnant women, including postpartum care, to ensure that their child is delivered healthy and they are kept alive in the process. Pro-life forces in the Senate tried to insert the "unborn children" language back into the bill and they lost.

So now the President's talking point is that he wants to move "adults" off the bill. What he really means is moving pregnant women off the bill, and that fact should be far more well-known than it is. The Administration tried to play this cute and use S-CHIP in 2002 as a vehicle to achieve "fetal personhood," and in the process pregnant women gained some access to services. Now that the fetal personhood aspect of this has been squashed, he wants them to fend for themselves - as well as the babies they carry.

As you may know, BlogPAC and Blue America are starting a program to make robocalls into the districts of five Democrats who voted against S-CHIP when it came up for vote.

Jim Marshall (GA)
Baron Hill (IN)
Gene Taylor (MS)
Bob Etheridge (NC)
Mike McIntyre (NC)

The Democratic House leadership put the hammer down and representatives like Dan Boren and Heath Shuler switched their votes in favor of S-CHIP, but these five Bush Dogs continue to religiously support the Bush administration’s short-sighted, inhumane and regressive policies.

We’ve asked you to reach out and call the offices of these Representatives, and now we’re stepping up our efforts.

These calls were recorded by Michelle James, a full time working mother who can’t afford health care for her son who has bronchitis. You can hear one of the calls here.

While we believe that there should be a big tent within the Democratic party, there are some issues that are not negotiable, and making sure kids have health care is one of them.

When you make these calls, let these members know that you believe pregnant women should be part of a strategy to ensure children's health insurance coverage. And you can support these efforts financially at the Blue America PAC's ActBlue page.

Man Of His Word

Tommy Thompson had a resume rivaling Bill Richardson, could take credit for a state issue that was so dear to conservatives (welfare reform) that they took it national, was a Bush Cabinet secretary that DIDN'T resign under an ethical cloud, actually sounded like an adult when talking about the high-priority domestic issue of health care, set a marker for himself of dropping out of the Presidential race if he didn't do well in the Ames Straw Poll, and after finishing far back in the pack, did just that.

He was far too honest and competent to be the Republican nominee.

Two Million For That!

Here are the results of the Ames Straw Poll, and I have to say, for $2 million dollars or so and against practically no competition, I'd say Mitt Romney didn't have the kind of victory he sought.

1. Mitt Romney 4,516 31.6%
2. Mike Huckabee 2,587 18.1%
3. Sam Brownback 2,192 15.3%
4. Tom Tancredo 1,960 13.7%
5. Ron Paul 1,305 9.1%
6. Tommy Thompson 1,039 7.3%
7. Fred Thompson 203 1.4%
8. Rudy Giuliani 183 1.3%
9. Duncan Hunter 174 1.2%
10. John McCain 101 0.7%
11. John Cox 41 0.3%

Quick thoughts here. Romney paid two million dollars for 4,600 or so supporters; that's a little pathetic. Huckabee ended up coming out of this looking the best. Tommy Thompson said he needed to be in first place to continue. I'm expecting the press conference in Madison any minute now. Frankly, Duncan Hunter couldn't even beat guys who weren't competing in Ames, so he might want to consider taking a hike as well.

And I think John Cox those 41 votes off his music video.

UPDATE: Oh, and there were major voting machine problems. Thank you, Diebold!

Republican Debate Aiming For A Lie A Minute

I'm kind of half-listening to the debate on CNN Pipeline, and already I've heard Rudy Giuliani say that Iran will get weapons "very soon" or something (in contrast to the truth, that they're many years away), and I heard Brownback, in the midst of basically endorsing Joe Biden's three-state solution, say that he "chaired hearings" in a Middle East subcommittee during the run-up to war, when in fact the Democrats were in charge of the Senate and he didn't chair anything at that time.

Tommy Thompson claimed that the Maliki government should give the Iraqi Parliament the ability to vote on whether or not the Americans should withdraw. Um, they did. Today.

Huckabee just claimed that the Taliban is fighting Ronald Reagan. Reagan ARMED them!

I'm pretty much done with this thing. The truth is gasping for air.

(Parenthetically, Ron Paul just got CHEERS, in a Northeast audience but a Republican one, for calling for a quick withdrawal of Iraq...)

UPDATE: I love how Duncan Hunter thinks he built the border fence in San Diego by himself. You think he's ever held a hammer? It's also interesting that he calls it the "Bush-McCain-Kennedy" bill. These guys can't run away fast enough from the President.

UPDATE II: Shorter Mike Huckabee: "Who knows how the world was created? What's it matter?" Ahem, I want to know if my President believes in the scientific method. That has application to a vast majority of Presidential decisions.

Also, I do want to add that every single one of Ron Paul's answers have been met with cheers. I haven't necessarily agreed with all of them, but the Republican audience appears to have.

Romney's being deliberately stupid about Big Oil. He's saying "these companies should just build more refineries" when in fact they aren't for a reason, because it jacks their price up. The Republican line on global warming is nuclear power. Pretty much it. Maybe they can bury the waste in their own backyard.

UPDATE III: Duncan Hunter just told us the new standard of winning in Iraq. "A modicum of freedom." Smell that modicum!

UPDATE IV: Watching Republicans talking about healthcare is kind of hilarious. Tommy Thompson at least has a smidgen of credibility on this, being the former HHS secretary. Everyone else literally has no idea what they're talking about. Watch Mitt Romney run away from his policy in Massachusetts (which isn't that good, by the way, as those premium prices are skyrocketing despite an individual mandate). Watch Rudy Giuliani talk about useless Health Savings Accounts. Watch them all lie about the actual Democratic policies on the issue. But they ALL know that the public is worried about health care. So they try to talk about the issue without actually saying a word.

UPDATE V: Tancredo - "Bilingual countries don't work!" Yes, those animals in Canada are living in a wasteland!

UPDATE VI: McCain - "I'll veto every bill that has pork!" Which will reduce the deficit from $300 billion to $294 billion.

I Gotta Take A Wiz

Yes, Tommy Thompson actually made the excuse that he unintentionally said it would be OK for a company to fire an employee just because they were gay because he had to break the seal.

Tommy Thompson cited a dead hearing aid and an urgent need to use the bathroom in explaining on Saturday why he said at a GOP presidential debate that an employer should be allowed to fire a gay worker.

"Nobody knows that," Thompson said. "I've been very sick. ... I was very sick the day of the debate. I had all of the problems with the flu and bronchitis that you have, including running to the bathroom. I was just hanging on. I could not wait until the debate got off so I could go to the bathroom."

I'm speechless.

You know, Tommy Thompson actually doesn't deserve this much ink because he has no chance of being President. But doesn't the admission that you can't think straight if you have to get your toilet on AUTOMATICALLY DISQUALIFYING for anyone who wants to be the leader of the free world? I mean, the pressure you have being President is a lot stronger than the pressure on your bladder.

I also was unaware that bigotry was tied to bladder control. In that case, let's buy everyone Depends and rid the world of homophobia!

A Government Without A Head

There are these two big scandals looming under the surface that are affecting people right now, and they cannot be twisted as political, they cannot be explained away by blaming Democrats or Bill Clinton or whatever trick the executive branch wants to use. They are the pet food scandal (I should say human food too at this point) and the student loan industry scam, which was well-known to this government for six years and yet they did nothing to stop it, allowing predatory lenders to buy their way into university's favor and limit choices for consumers. These aren't political scandals; they're simply the obvious outgrowth of an ideology that views the mechanisms of government with contempt, and perceives power as a way to make money for cronies and friends.

In the case of both the student loan industry and the pet food industry, oversight was non-existent, and companies were allowed to subvert the rules at the expense of taxpayers. This is not incidental - it's what Republicans call "good, solid American enterprise." This is exactly what they want, and they turn a blind eye to the consequences. As someone said to Bill Kristol in his embarrasing display of a debate with Robert Kuttner at yesterday's "Failure of Conservatism" conference, "Why is it that, 6 years after 9-11, this government can't guarantee the safety of my cat's food supply?" The answer is because they have no interest in it. And Republicans usually won't tell you that, although sometimes they'll slip up and tell the truth:

Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy G. Thompson today joined an exodus from President Bush's first-term Cabinet, announcing his resignation at a press conference in which he also warned that the world faces a potentially catastrophic flu pandemic and that the U.S. food supply is vulnerable to terrorists [...]

Thompson said he also worries constantly about food poisoning.

"I, for the life of me, cannot understand why the terrorists have not, you know, attacked our food supply because it is so easy to do," he said. "And we are importing a lot of food from the Middle East, and it would be easy to tamper with that."

Although inspections of food imports have risen sharply in the past four years, "it still is a very minute amount that we're doing."

That idiot wants to be President, after he admitted that in four years as Health and Human Services Secretary he made no effort to inspect the human food supply coming into the country.

But there are even more examples of this failure of governance that have come out in the last couple days. The White House used a rural Internet financing program to reward rich companies, and did nothing to actually finance Internet infrastructure in rural areas, which was its intent:

Members of a House committee charged yesterday that a five-year, $1.2 billion program to expand broadband Internet services to rural communities has missed many unserved areas while channeling hundreds of millions of dollars in subsidized loans to companies in places where service already exists.

The Post reported that since 2001 more than half the money has gone to metropolitan regions or communities within easy commutes of a mid-size city. An Internet provider in Houston got $23 million in loans to wire affluent subdivisions, including one that boasts million-dollar houses and an equestrian center.

Congress created the rural broadband program in 2002. To date, according to Andrew, 69 loans for $1.2 billion have been approved to finance infrastructure in 40 states. Only 40 percent of the communities benefiting were unserved at the time of the loan, Andrew said.

They can't implement laws they've passed because they have no interest in doing so. And the laws they don't like, they try to change, if the change can reward big businesses or their own pocketbooks:

An Interior Department official who was recently rebuked for altering scientific conclusions to reduce protections for endangered species and providing internal documents to lobbyists resigned Monday, officials said.

Julie A. MacDonald, a deputy assistant secretary who oversaw the Fish and Wildlife Service's endangered species program, also faced conflict-of-interest questions in a report issued by the Interior Department's inspector general in March. [...]

In 2004, MacDonald was criticized for overruling field biologists on the habitat requirements of the greater sage grouse, disputing their conclusion that oil and gas operations could interfere with the birds' breeding and nesting.

The inspector general's report outlined instances where MacDonald, a civil engineer with no formal training in natural sciences, advocated altering scientific conclusions in ways that favored development and agricultural interests.

H. Dale Hall, director of the Fish and Wildlife Service, told investigators that MacDonald overrode field experts on designating habitat for the endangered southwestern willow flycatcher.

Hall, a wildlife biologist, told investigators he was in a "running battle" with MacDonald over the issue. Hall said MacDonald had a particular interest in endangered species rulings that affected California because her husband had a ranch in the state.

California property records show that MacDonald and her husband, Charles, own 80 acres identified as crop land in Yolo County near Sacramento.

McDonald was about to face a House committee on this issue, so she did the brave thing and resigned first.

Right wingers like to call the anger that comes from hearing these stories "Bush Derangement Syndrome." Actually, the anger comes from living in a country where anarchy is reigning. The government doesn't exist for any primary function other than profit-taking. This makes principled, reasonable people furious, because it's our government, and we're paying the price. I guess those who would rather spin the truth and dismiss the effects, one must conclude, enjoy being ripped off this way, and don't care that their government has been turned into a cash register for the rich and connected. I do care, and so do a lot of people. At the roots, this is the real reason that conservatism is a dirty word nowadays. People actually want a government they can count on to be minimally competent in carrying out its mission and its policies. That is sadly lacking today.

Election News You Can Use

A mini-roundup:

• The only reason that you would know Tommy Thompson was running for President was the fact that he stepped in it yesterday by praising Jews for, essentially, being money-grubbing Jews. He kept insisting that it was a compliment, that he was just saying that Jews were great businessmen. You mean like Shylock? This isn't offensive, it's just clueless. He should join Joe Biden in the foot-in-mouth primary.

• If there were one Congressional seat that Democrats had to leave open, I would offer that it should be Duncan Hunter's open seat. It's a tough red district, and even though open seats are attractive, the fact that Hunter's son is running, and that he may be over in Iraq DURING the election, makes him almost unassailable.

• I really hope Brad Miller runs for Senate in North Carolina against Liddy Dole. Being only 10 points down a year and a half out, and with Dole at 44%, makes it a prime opportunity. Miller is a netroots hero, and really understands how to be a proud Democrat in North Carolina and not back down.

• Sen. John Warner raised five hundred dollars for the whole quarter? That's the kind of money you raise if you're not raising money and somebody gives you some by accident. I don't think he's running again, and if his namesake Mark Warner runs, that seat's going to flip.

• In another case of Democrats who came very close in 2006 who will run again in 2008, Dr. Victoria Wulsin will challenge Mean Jean Schmidt in OH-02. This is the best way for a challenger to defeat an incumbent, by raising their profile first, and then running to win the second time.

• The other shoe is dropping for Rep. John Doolittle. A former senior staffer to Doolittle, Kevin Ring, abruptly resigned his job as a lobbyist yesterday. Ring also worked for Jack Abramoff from 2000 to 2004, and he was basically Abramoff's way to get to Doolittle. After this trail appeared to have gone cold, this is a major sign that it's heating up again:

As The Politico notes, Ring seems poised to follow the path of other aides who've pled guilty in the Abramoff scandal -- pleading guilty to lesser charges in return for delivering their former bosses to investigators. Ex-Rep. Bob Ney's (R-OH) former chief of staff Neil Volz, who also worked with Ring with Abramoff and then later at Barnes & Thornburg, resigned abruptly from that firm in January last year. He pled guilty to corruption charges in May, agreeing to cooperate and implicating Ney.

Of course, another repeat candidate, Charlie Brown, is challenging Doolittle, and he raised over $100,000 in the first quarter, and since Doolittle has been busy erasing massive debt, holds a $200,000 cash-on-hand advantage. Of course, if things keep going the same way for Doolittle, he'll be spending the 2008 election in court.