Not surprisingly, the Greenville (SC) News is defending Bush's veto of SCHIP. I fumed for a day and then sat down to write. Clicked around on the web and found some easy numbers anyone can use for their own LTE.
From our county-wide school district, the most recent enrollment figures: 67,383 kids. From the US Census Bureau, most recent estimates 11.2 percent of US kids without health insurance.
Which means, my county has more than 7,500 uninsured, school-age children. (Make it local. Make it real to people. Make them think.)
My LTE follows.
To the Editor,
I’m not surprised to see your newspaper defending President Bush and Senator Lindsey Graham’s actions to kill a bill extending health care to poor children.
I’m not sure how that fits with Republicans being the Party of Life, and Respecting Life -- health care is often vital to life -- but maybe you don’t ask yourselves those kinds of questions.
But your reasoning – that the bill might be used by undeserving children to get health care -- did make me wonder where all these non-poor, non-deserving children are? Maybe you could find a few of them and expose them, as they so justly deserve.
Or maybe you could send those people you call reporters out into the county and see what’s actually going on here.
I’ll help you get started. The Greenville County School District’s web site says its current enrollment is 67,383.
The US Census Bureau’s web site says 11.2 percent of children in this country are without health insurance.
That means we probably have more than 7,500 school-age children in Greenville County without health insurance.
I’d like to hear about those kids. I’d like to see their faces, know their stories. I would think a real newspaper would want to look into such an important issue.
Let’s look those kids in the face and tell them they don’t deserve to see a doctor when they’re sick. That it’s too expensive. That we don’t care. (And that we’re still really good Christian people.)
Sincerely,
Teresa Hill
Anyone is free to use anything here they like in their own LTE. There are more government statistics at http://www.census.gov/...
I'm sure there are state-by-state numbers there. I was just looking for something quick and easy to make a point. Couldn't resist the dig at all the so-called good Christian people in Greenville County.