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(Cross-posted at TPM Cafe)
High-quality, affordable healthcare is not a luxury -- it is both a necessity and a right. In Congress, I'm fighting so everyone has access to the medicine and care they deserve. And when it comes to this right, the health of our children should be our top priority. That's why I was proud to help create the Children's Health Insurance Program (CHIP) over ten years ago. Today, CHIP provides health care coverage to six million children nationwide who would otherwise be uninsured.
Still, we must do better. Yesterday, I read an editorial in the Star Ledger highlighting a recent report by Families USA which touched upon the 267,000 uninsured children here in New Jersey. This comes on the heels of the Asbury Park Press recently reporting 1.3 million people in our state living without health insurance. Stark facts like these serve as glaring reminders that it is time to finally expand CHIP -- which here in New Jersey is known as FamilyCare.
Over the past two years, as Chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Health, I worked hard to make sure we passed legislation expanding and strengthening CHIP so that we could cover 10 million low-income children.
Unfortunately, President Bush blocked our efforts, not once, but twice. He vetoed legislation giving states the resources they needed to both maintain current enrollment levels and add an additional four million children to the rolls of the insured. Instead of working cooperatively with Congress to develop a bipartisan compromise that would build CHIP up for future generations of children, President Bush set out to completely tear it down.
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