[Congressional Record Volume 143, Number 37 (Thursday, March 20, 1997)]
[Senate]
[Pages S2644-S2645]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




               PUBLIC CALL FOR CHILDREN'S HEALTH COVERAGE

  Mr. DASCHLE. Mr. President, last week, over one-half dozen groups 
representing millions of Americans spread out across Capitol Hill to 
lobby for legislation that would guarantee every child health 
insurance. Their message was simple: it is wrong that America, alone 
among industrialized nations, doesn't assure health protection for its 
children.
  We in Congress should heed their call and work together to erase this 
ignoble distinction.
  Bolstering their message was the release last week of the Children's 
Defense Fund's 1997 edition of the ``State of the Children Yearbook.'' 
The picture that report paints of the state of children's health care 
is bleak.
  Every 48 seconds a child is born without insurance. One in every 7 
children is uninsured for the entire year. Nearly 1 in every 3 is 
uninsured for at least one month during any year. Nine out of every 10 
uninsured children is from a family where at least one parent works.
  In announcing the results of this report, Marian Wright Edelman, 
CDF's President, succinctly sums up the situation. ``Lack of health 
insurance is a problem we can solve right now and make a huge 
difference in many child lives. The issue is whether we care enough to 
build the political will to do it.''
  The effects of children not having insurance are well known to us 
all: Children without health coverage get less cost-effective 
preventive care, less basic care and more costly acute care when their 
illness is too advanced to ignore. Further, uninsured children are more 
likely to suffer preventable disease and have trouble learning.
  How can we reverse these trends? Proposals to address this problem 
are well known to all of us and simply stated through the following 
principles. First, make health coverage available to every uninsured 
child through age 18 and every uninsured pregnant woman. Second, make 
coverage genuinely affordable to all families. Third, give children 
access to coverage that provides for the full range of health care that 
children need. Finally, build on--do not replace--the current employer-
based system, Medicaid and public-private initiatives in the States.
  Advocates of guaranteeing all children health insurance are telling 
us to act bipartisanly. And there is ample precedent for bipartisan 
action on behalf of children's health. Almost every health reform bill, 
Democratic and Republican alike, introduced in the 103d Congress 
provided assistance to low-income Americans to purchase private health 
coverage--most had special assistance for the cost of children's 
coverage.
  In other words, we have agreed in the past that children who fall 
through the cracks deserve proper health coverage.
  Children don't vote; they do not sit on corporate boards; and they 
cannot argue their case on the Senate floor. But we have a vote. We can 
take it upon ourselves to improve the lives of our children and their 
families by making our nation's children our top priority.

[[Page S2645]]

  The public has taken note. Now is the time to answer their call. Our 
children deserve no less.

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