67-29 which is a veto sustaining majority in the Senate. President Bush has already declared an intention to veto, with some extremely masterful language:

Today, the Senate passed a State Children's Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) reauthorization bill that fails to focus on poor children, and instead creates a new entitlement program for higher income households. In fact, the bill specifically eliminates the requirement that states enroll 95% of children in households under 200% of the federal poverty level.

The President will veto this bill because it directs scarce funding to higher incomes at the expense of poor families.

We encourage Congress to send the President a continuing resolution extending SCHIP so coverage for the children who rely on the program will not be threatened. We should take this time to arrive at a more rational, bipartisan SCHIP reauthorization bill that focuses on children in poor families who don't currently have insurance, rather than raising taxes to cover people who already have private insurance.

When the bill passed the House, it did not do so with enough votes to sustain a veto in that body. I would expect that the Democrats would want to put it up for another vote, just to increase the pressure "for the children." This issue is just too easy to demagogue, they won't give up that opportunity.

On the merits of the bill, I'm with the president completely. If the politicians want to do something to help working class families around health care, how about full tax credits for health care? How about coming up with a comprehensive solution to the portability problem? In my opinion this is all about fixing a problem that largely does not exist for the opportunity to beat your political opponent about the head and neck.

Pass SCHIP as it was last year and move on to a real issue.

O.K., I'm skeptical about Hillary Clinton's ability to craft health care legislation. I've written on this page how her first attempt, during her husband's time in office, was a failure in leadership that did not account for the complexity of the task. This time around, she assures us, she has learned from past mistakes. From the NY Times:

Mrs. Clinton promised to cover everyone without big new bureaucracies, without a complicated reorganization of one-seventh of the American economy and without affecting Americans who are insured and happy with their coverage--all features that helped doom the Clinton [Bill] administration's plan 14 years ago.

Maybe. Hey, it's worth a look, anyway. You can read about the plan here. David Brooks, for one, is impressed with what he sees, stating:

"Hillary Clinton's health care plan is a huge step forward from 1993. It's better than the G.O.P. candidates' plans (which don't exist).

But one person who is against the plan, even though he hasn't read it, is Mitt Romney. Watch as he stumbles through the following set piece yesterday. He cannot engage any of the specifics of the plan because he hasn't bothered to look at it. It's really a shameful display of how some politicians rely on buzzwords and tried and true talking points over substance.

Do most Americans really care whether their health care is administered by their state government as opposed to the federal one? And why should residents of Mississippi suffer while those in California enjoy universal care?

Democratic presidential nominee John Edwards is talking tough. If elected president, he promises to forth a bill that revokes congress' health benefits until they pas a universal health care package for the rest of the country. That assumes, of course, that he can convince the congress to pass a bill that would punish itself.

Yes, really. Per CNN, Edwards made the remarks before the Laborers Leadership Convention:

"To show Congress just how serious I am, on the first day of my administration, I will submit legislation that ends health care coverage for the president, all members of Congress, and all senior political appointees in both branches of government on July 20th, 2009 - unless we have passed universal health care reform."

I guess you could call it the "see how you like it" trial by ordeal method of government. You could also call it absurd to the nth degree. What is Edwards thinking?

It would seem that Hillary Clinton's $110 billion dollar a year plan for universal health care has stolen the proverbial thunder from Edwards's own undefined universal health care plan so Edwards is seeking to "one up" Hillary. However, the way you "one up" someone is to simply offer a better and more effective plan. Edwards instead tries to be melodramatic, but ends up looking ridiculous in the process.

As Hillary introduces her national health care plan today, I see that the media (for the most part) is falling all over itself in praise for Hillary - The Health Care Master. Not on the merits of the plan, you see, but on the fact that she has paid her dues. From ABC News:

But these days, Hillary Clinton isn't running away from the 1994 failure of her health care plan. She's wearing it as a badge of honor - joking that she's got "the scars to show for it. "We set the groundwork in place, so that now, people are saying, 'boy, we wish we had done that back then,'" she told an audience at a health care forum in Carson City, Nev.

"It's really quite remarkable how Mrs. Clinton is turning the health care debacle of 1994 into an asset," said Norman Ornstein, a political analyst at the American Enterprise Institute. "Hillary Clinton has two great things going for her on this issue. The first is, she knows it cold. The second is that she can say, 'I was for dramatic reform before any of the rest of you.'"

The long told tale, as seen above, is that the health care plan that was defeated in 1994 was Hillary's baby, start to finish. But now we have a strange story (The Hillarycare Mythology) just published in the liberal magazine The American Prospect by Paul Starr (a "White House senior health policy advisor at the time") that purports to set the story straight on that particular heath care plan debacle. He claims that Hillarycare I was actually Billcare I - it was her husband's plan all along. Hillary was there just as a salesperson for the plan, and when it courageously failed, fell on the sword to protect her beloved husband.

Someone on the Left doesn't have their story straight. Was Hillary a wronged genius, or was she a convenient fall guy? Pretty soon this Paul Starr character will be found attempting to commit suicide on an Amtrak train somewhere.

Senator Hillary Clinton has laid out her plan for insuring everyone in the the nation and it is populist, expensive and detrimental to small business from the first word:

Addressing a crowd at a medical center in the early voting state of Iowa, Clinton laid out her proposal, with the centerpiece a so-called "individual mandate," requiring everyone to have health insurance - just as most states require drivers to purchase auto insurance. Rival John Edwards has also offered a plan that includes an individual mandate, while the proposal outlined by Barack Obama does not.

Clinton's plan builds on the existing employer-based system of coverage. People who receive insurance through the workplace could continue to do so; businesses, in turn, would be required to offer insurance to employees, or contribute to a government-run pool that would help pay for those not covered. Clinton would also offer a tax subsidy to small businesses to help them afford the cost of providing coverage to their workers.

This plan forces businesses to pay for employee health care even though many small businesses can't afford it. I provide my employees with health care and pay 100% of the employees while they pick up the costs for their families, if I were forced to pay the entire cost, I would have to pull the plug and work for someone else because I could never afford it.

The single most important change to existing health care pricing would be to limit the amount someone can recover for malpractice. Such legislation has been enacted in California and other states and should be considered nationally. The trial lawyers are making a killing and it's costing the rest of us in increased premiums.

Senator Hillary Clinton has announced a new universal health care plan and she is making this a major campaign promise in her run for the White House. (Based on her lead in the polls, she is a lock for the nomination.) Of course, Clinton also realizes that there will be stiff opposition to such a huge government program. Clinton commented on potential opposition in an AP report:

"A plan is necessary but not sufficient. We've got to have a political consensus in order to withstand the enormous opposition from those interests that will have something to lose in a really reformed health-care system."

The re-launching of the universal health care plan is somewhat curious. Imagine if a motion picture company produced a film that was such a box office failure that the executives and board of director members were fired left and right. Now, imagine if one of the people working at the studio during that time period announced the decision to remake the film that bombed miserably and remake it only a little over a decade after the debacle. How would that be received?

In the early 1990's, Hillary Clinton's health care plan led to the outright devastation of the Democrats in the election of 1994 and, to a significant degree, crippled much of President Bill Clinton's legislative agenda. The House and the Senate ceded control to the Republicans for over a decade as a result. Why would she opt to bring this back to the table? Does she feel the climate changed that much? Will it help her on the campaign or will it derail her? Only time will tell.

On a side note, the original film version of Dr. Doolittle was a major failure for 20th Century Fox and nearly bankrupted the studio. The Eddie Murphy remake was a mega hit.

My fellow Ohio Blogger Brain Shavings alerted me to this last evening. I was not aware that Mike Huckabee along with Senator Sam Brownback joined up with Lance Armstrong and his "War on Cancer".

Huckabee committed to sign a nationwide smoking ban in public places, should such a measure win approval in Congress. Brownback said he would let anti-smoking efforts continue under the authority of states and local communities.

I don't and have never smoked, but I think that Brownback has a much better stand on principle here. While Mike Huckabee seems to be an earnest believer in the power of government to fix things. The federal government does not have the freedom to pass any law that is in the public good without violating the tenth amendment.

If individual states want to ban smoking anytime and anywhere, that's probably OK, but the federal government should not do so. Mike Huckabee may call himself a conservative, but making decisions on behalf of people for their own good is not a conservative principle, and doing so at the fed level just doubles the problem.

I still think Huckabee has a good chance of breaking out of the second tier, and especially of overtaking John McCain, but he will need the energy of conservatives to push him there, and this is not the way to get it.

Or as we say in English: "Enjoy your meal." Well for Republican candidate Mike Huckabee it means: "Quit Digging your Grave with a Knife and Fork." This is the title of the book he wrote after he recovered from a food addiction and lost 110 pounds. Huckabee spoke to southern governors on Saturday about his concerns about obesity in this country. According to him, an obesity epidemic could cause serious concerns for the American economy and for national security.

700 000 Americans will die in a year because of unhealthy habits which also include smoking. Huckabee went so far that he has compared it with disasters like hurricane Katrina and 9/11, since the fatality rate is as high. Each day 2,000 Americans die to do poor health choices. 90% of all diabetes cases are considered Type 2, which is linked to obesity or lack of physical activity. The health care costs of a person with diabetes is five times higher then health care cost of a person without it. For more on these numbers see this link. The military is also affected by obesity. The percentage of overweight possible recruits rose from 27 percent to 32 percent from 1996 to 2005. However in order to get more recruits the army allows people to enlist if they reduce to weight standards within a year in their age group. Officials in the military are concerned about this problem for quite some time.

Poor kids, to be specific. In other words, kids whose parents do not have the means to afford private insurance. The White House wasted no time and promised to veto the bill. A slippery slope, they say. Once you start insuring uninsured kids, it's only a matter of time before Stalin, Marx, Mao, and Lenin will rise from the grave and take away every luxury that capitalism still affords us. House Republicans, unlike their Senate counterparts, were also vehemently against what they decried as an unwelcome sign of creeping socialism:

But in the end, the Democrats has weapons that were just too powerful--a promise to insure 5 million more children who otherwise would have no access to health care, adding to the 6 million children already covered--and the backing of Republican and Democratic governors, the American Medical Association, AARP, the March of Dimes, the Catholic Health Association, the American Academy of Pediatrics, and even cyclist Lance Armstrong. And the prospects are good in the Senate, where a key Republican, Orin G. Hatch (Utah) said, "It's difficult for me to understand how anyone wouldn't want to do this."

You better believe it. Especially with Lance Armstrong on board. But seriously, we already have 6 million kids covered under the current plan. So if, as some Republicans insist, we look at this from a purely ideological point of view, shouldn't they be suggesting that we strip those kids of their coverage? Dennis Hastert put his opposition to the new bill this way, "Folks, that's the bottom line: It's a government-paid health care." How scary is that?

There was an article posted on CQ.com Thursday that I think was meant to mock Republicans, but might be thought of as suggesting a great way forward for both the House and the Senate:

Much of the rest of America might have been sneaking peeks on a workaday afternoon at the new 759-page Harry Potter best seller, but House Ways and Means Committee Republicans settled into their own long read after lunch on Thursday when they forced a delay of the markup of the Children's Health and Medicare Protection Act by exercising their right to have the 481-page bill read out loud

One of the biggest complaints I have about Congress is that most of the time they have no idea what they are voting on. Senators and Representatives don't write these bills -- their aides do. Most of the time, when questioned, individual Congressional members admit that they haven't read the bills being voted on. Add to that non-transparent earmarks and pork spending, and it's easy to see why the legislative process, more often than not, is a disaster either in process or waiting to happen.

This move by the Republicans was obviously a political tactic designed to buy more time to review the bill. But it's actually not a bad idea to do it all the time. If this type of public reading was mandatory for every bill that gets voted on, along with their amendments and all clearly defined final earmark attachments, perhaps it would limit the thousand page spending behemoths that get passed literally minutes after being introduced on the floor. Pardon my libertarianism, but less bills passed means less government in our lives.

When more bloggers regularly read bills than do the elected representatives that actually vote on them, we've got a serious problem.

And lived to tell about it. Last night, I and a group of co-workers and friends went to see Sicko. Let me say up front I have no particular fondness for Michael Moore one way or the other. I don't think he's nearly as bad as his detractors make him out nor as much of a hero as those who like him. But I dont think anyone should judge him without at least seeing his movies.

First off, it was more entertaining than I was expecting. There were parts that were óver the top' like the cruise to Guantanamo and there were parts he could have emphasized (lower overall costs of the Euro plans vs HMO costs) 'but there were parts where I laughed out loud. The 'best' moments were when people who live where there is universal health care were absolutely puzzled by the notion of paying for operations. Their looks were priceless.

Healthcare is a huge issue and it's going to get far worse as the boomer generation gets older and needs more services. We have almost no time left to plan for this. The fact is our population is in worse health than those with uni care (we rank just above Slovenia) and our life expectancy is lower as well. The part I wish Moore had stressed is how much all the admin and double system costs us. The government programs in the US have a 2% admin costs and the average HMO is about 21%. That 19% difference is enormous. Yes, Europeans pay more in taxes but they get more services in return.

Watch the film, share your own experiences with the fragmented system we have and which of the presidential candidates has your support on health care issues and why.

Update: Since a couple of people raise the income tax rate in other countries, perhaps it would be worthwhile to check. Follow below the fold please

Despite appearances, the looming battle over CHIP is not just about health insurance for poor kids. The Children's Health Insurance Program funds money that individual states can match to help provide health insurance for poor kids. It's the kind of program that politicians love to pass (for the kids and all that) and it has the side benefit of being a foot in the door for government healthcare. But Bush says he will veto any large expansion of the program. The NYT reports:

Tony Fratto, a White House spokesman, said: "The president's senior advisers will certainly recommend a veto of this proposal. And there is no question that the president would veto it.

For the Bush administration, nothing is sacred, except, that is, for partisan allegiance. Truth? Justice? Human rights? Forget about it. Well, add to that list the physical health of the nation itself. So says Dr. Richard Carmona, the nation's most recent surgeon general, who appeared before Congress today to detail the politicization of his office, and the outright muzzling of scientific knowledge that would benefit the American public.

"The reality is that the nation's doctor has been marginalized and relegated to a position with no independent budget, and with supervisors who are political appointees with partisan agendas," said Carmona.

Ronald Reagan's Surgeon General, C. Everett Koop concurs, and finds Carmona's treatment under the Bush administration an embarrassment. Same old story, it seems. Either you fall in line with the president's ideological game plan, or you will be discounted. Never mind if you have science on your side on issues like the effectiveness of condoms at stopping the spread of AIDS, the dangers of second-hand smoke, or the woeful results of abstinence-only sex-education. President Bush (and Karl Rove) know what's best for the country's health.

I remember the last time Michael Moore came out with a new movie. It was 2004, the summer of the Democratic National Convention in Boston . Earlier that year, we'd passed the one-year mark in Iraq; when the fall began, we would recognize the three-year anniversary of Sept. 11, 2001. The link between the horrific events of that day, and the war this nation entered in Iraq, hadn't been questioned that much. Moore's "Fahrenheit 9/11" deserves credit for getting people talking.

Now he has another film, "Sicko," a critique of the American health-care system. Once again, Moore is on message: Former Gov. Mitt Romney helped create a system that ostensibly provides health insurance for all in my home state of Massachusetts, while one of Mitt's rivals for the 2008 nomination, Sen. Hillary Clinton, tried to establish, but could not bring about, universal health care as first lady.

I plan on seeing the film in Boston and hope to have a review forthcoming ...

So I got a card in the mail from the "Commonwealth Health Insurance Connector Authority," based in Boston, informing this "Massachusetts Taxpayer" that "beginning July 1, 2007, a new Massachusetts law says that residents age 18 and over must have health insurance."

The card gives a deadline date of Dec. 31 for being able to demonstrate that I have health insurance; those who cannot prove this, the card continues, "will lose the tax benefit of their personal exemption on their 2007 Massachusetts income tax return, worth $219 for an individual. Penalties will increase for 2008."

I'd envisioned health-insurance reform – promoted in this state by then-governor and current GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney -- as a way for government to show a more caring side. How ironic that even as the state government promotes health care for all its citizens, it does so in such a high-handed way.