Spitzer and Schwarzenegger lobby Bush on children's health care

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August 30, 2007

By JOHN KEKIS The Press Republican Thu Aug 30, 2007, 07:04 AM EDT

SYRACUSE, N.Y. (AP) — New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer joined California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger on Wednesday in sending a letter to the White House imploring President Bush to change course on health care.

"You have two governors, two of the largest states in the nation, different parties, agreeing on the fundamental precept of what good health care is all about," Spitzer said during a daylong visit to the New York State Fair. "I hope and believe it will make him rethink what he has done."

New guidelines announced last week by the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) will require many children to be uninsured for a full year before they have access to government-subsidized coverage. The new rules effectively block New York's already approved expansion of children's health insurance and roll back expansions or pending plans in 17 other states and the District of Columbia.

"CMS has promulgated rules that would be devastating to the nation and to the state of New York because they will preclude us from covering every child in the state with health insurance," said Spitzer, a Democrat who has vowed to take court action if necessary. "It is bad policy. It is a violation of the basic decency that argues in favor of giving kids health insurance."

California and New York currently cover more than 1.4 million children and pregnant women through the State Children's Health Insurance Program, Spitzer said. That represents nearly 25 percent of all SCHIP enrollees in the country.

Schwarzenegger, a former bodybuilder who has taken to health care with gusto, announced a plan in January to provide everyone in California with insurance. As many as 6.7 million Californians, or 18.5 percent of the population, are uninsured.

The White House has also said Bush will veto a bipartisan plan that would extend health insurance, and with it such essentials as regular checkups and preventive medical care, to an estimated 4.1 million currently uninsured children.

"I mean, people have access to health care in America," Bush told an audience in Cleveland last month after the Senate Finance Committee approved an expansion of the federal Children's Health Insurance Program to cover nearly 10 million children. "After all, you just go to an emergency room."

Spitzer criticized Bush for the remark.

"The notion that we are going to have kids use the emergency room as their primary point of entry to health care is simply unacceptable," Spitzer said. "It is unethical. It is wrong from a health care perspective. It is wrong from every possible perspective, and I think it speaks to what has been wrong with policies coming out of Washington recently."