Sanctity of Life? HA! (or Bush says Screw Poor Kids)

The Bushies and their base love to proclaim their holy mission to "protect the sanctity of life." But what does that mean? For the Republic Party, it means opposing all abortion, regardless of circumstances, to include even allowing young people to get sex-ed at school or information about contraseptives. For those past birth, how much of a priority is it for the Bushies to give children access to healthcare? Well, if the kids can afford it, then great. If not...

All to "protect life?" No. To protect something much more important to today's Republic Party. Profit.

It appears that healthcare is a luxury item for poor kids that George Bush cannot tolerate. According to an article in today's NY Times entitled "A Battle Over Expansion of Children’s Insurance", Bush will fight against expanding the State Children’s Health Insurance Program.

The fight over a popular health insurance program for children is intensifying, with President Bush now leading efforts to block a major expansion of the program, which is a top priority for Congressional Democrats.

Why fight this? Well, the White House claims that the Democrats’ proposal would move the nation toward "a single-payer health care system with rationing and price controls." Ahhh. Feel the fear. Be afraid of healthcare. Unless there's big corporate profits involved.

What's being proposed is to raise the number of covered kids from the  7.4 million recipients last year. The cost? $75 billion dollars over the next 5 years. Bush wants to spend half as much, a figure that the CBO estimates would cut the number of insured kids by 700,000.

To return the children’s insurance program to what he calls "its original intent," Mr. Bush has asked Congress to reduce federal payments to the states for coverage of children in families with incomes of more than twice the poverty level. (A family of four is considered poor if its annual income is less than $20,650.)

Bush thinks we cannot waste our money to insure children in a family of 4 who earn as much as $41,000. I'll not mention how much money Bush is willing to spend for wars of aggression to kill our kids and those of nations audacious enough to live over our oil.

But really, why do this? Does Bush hate kids? Nah. He just doesn't care enough about poor people to concern himself with their welfare at all. But W does care about one thing- corporate profits. Thus, this pathetic admission:

Mr. Bush and some Republicans in Congress worry that as public coverage becomes available to families with higher incomes, it tends to replace private coverage.

There it is. No slippery slope. No we-can't-afford-it. No long lines and poorly administered government health care bs. Nope. Just the naked concern that if our government helps out kids, then the corporations lose their profit opportunities.

And after all, isn't that what our soldiers are fighting dying for?