Healthcare is one of the most complex and vital domestic issues in America, and has been for decades. As other industrial and post-industrial countries (including our friendly northern neighbor) moved towards a universal plan that eventually became effective and efficient, the United States has moved at a snails' pace.
The statistics are bleak, but the greatest pull of all is the wretched feeling we as a nation must continue to endure for every moment that children, who cannot earn income or provide for themselves, go without healthcare in America, and they do so in startling numbers.
The progress to universal coverage is shockingly slow...
Based off of data released by the CDC in 2007 (warning, PDF), as of 2006 there are 6.8 million children in America without access to healthcare. While the improvements are modest from a view of 1997-2006, they are stagnant and horrid since 2002.
In 1997, 9.9 million children had no access to healthcare.
In 2006, that number was reduced to 6.8 million, a decrease of 3.1 million.
However, since 2002, in which 7.6 million children had no healthcare, the number has been reduced by only 800,000 (as a percentage, it's gone from 10.5% to 9.3% in that time period). That's minuscule, at this pace children will be without care for everything from their measles to their sprains for decades to come.
I say to hell with gradualism, to hell with waiting, and to hell with bickering over spending. In an administration so wasteful, so unbalanced in its spending, they cannot extend the hand to help families that can't pay the healthcare bills and expand SCHIP?
Why, after Congress passed a much more modest, and very generous compromise bill did the current administration still not step up to accelerate the coverage of children?
Instead, the same program was extended.
And we are back where we started. A slow, agonizing march to cover and protect children.
Think of the urban areas that have seen better days, think of the rural areas that haven't seen as much money come their ways to lend a hand. Think of middle class families with two parents and think of orphan children without a constant home.
They're all there. They grow up bruised, their sprains and fractures don't get a proper look at. Lazy eye, an ailment I suffered from and eventually had surgically corrected, makes their eyesight poor and they're laughed at by their peers. Insoles and pediatrics are rarely available, so they have flat feet. Infections take much longer to pass by because they don't have the necessary antibiotics or medical advice--often, they and their family may not be sure what ails them. They have coughs and colds constantly. And when they grow up their initial bad health may very well carry over.
And any accident, any terrible moment could have the most drastic of consequences.
Not one moment longer! Insure America's children NOW!
Why don't we truly invest in the future of the next generation?