SCHIP Rally

Wednesday, October 3rd, President Bush VETOES Funding for Children’s Health Care
Thursday, October 4th, Keene Area Rally calling out President Bush and Senator Gregg’s misdirected priorities for America’s Children and calling on the US Congress to override the Bush Veto

WHAT: HEALTH CARE RALLY FOR AMERICA’S CHILDREN!
WHERE
WHEN
Keene Central Square
Main Street, Keene, NH 03431

Thursday, October 4th, 2007
12:00-1:00 p.m.



Last week members in the United States Congress voted to expand the State Children’s Health Insurance Program (SCHIP). Today the president vetoed this important funding for children’s health care. SCHIP, a program that has effectively worked for 10 years funds Healthy Kids Silver in NH, which makes health insurance affordable for working families whose jobs do not provide benefits; parents pay premiums on a sliding scale.

The legislation the president vetoed today was a bipartisan agreement struck by House and Senate negotiators to bring health coverage to nearly ten million children in need. The legislation would preserve coverage for all 6.6 million children currently covered by CHIP, and reaching millions more low-income, uninsured American children in the next five years. SCHIP has been effective for 10 years and is strongly supported by forty-five Republicans and almost every Democrat in the House of Representatives; Republican Finance Chairman Chuck Grassley from Iowa, Conservative Senator Orrin Hatch, more than a dozen other Republican Senators and every single Democrat in the Senate; 43 Governors, including the conservative Governor of Georgia, Sunny Purdue; and over 250 grassroots organizations all across the country have come out in favor of SCHIP.

Despite this incredible unity – President Bush and Senator Gregg have determined that voting against and vetoing SCHIP is going to be their legacy to our children.

Over 7,000 children in New Hampshire rely upon Healthy Kids Silver for health care coverage; the legislation the president vetoed today would have made coverage affordable for the families of another several thousand children in New Hampshire who need it.

SCHIP has reduced the number of uninsured children in working families by 35 percent. Focusing on preventive health care, many of the 6.6 million children covered by the program are now getting regular checkups. And their primary care comes from a family doctor, not from an expensive and inefficient emergency room.

Examples of this success can be found in every single state and study after study shows: Our youth enrolled in the Children’s Health Insurance Program are much more likely to have regular doctor and dental care; They report lower rates of unmet need for care; The quality of care they receive is far better than it was before; School performance improves; The plan is helping to close the disparity in care for minority children; And the Children’s Health Insurance Program has become a major source of care for rural children.

Here in NH, important programs that offer affordable health care to children from low-income families, like NH Healthy Kids, are threatened because they rely on SCHIP funds!

This program makes health care affordable for hundreds of thousands of working families in America. We need to send a message to our Senators that children’s health care is our priority!

Please join faith leaders, elected officials, human service providers, citizens and NH Healthy Kids recipients as we call on President Bush and Senator Gregg to stand with our working families and

Please bring your cell phone and we will be calling Senator Gregg’s Office and writing him letters at the event.

State Senator Molly Kelly will be attending and Governor Lynch has been invited.

For more information please call Ellen Clement, 603-399-4923
Or Jaime Contois at 603-504-2906

Jaime Contois
NH Organizer
Working Families Win
603-504-2906 (cell)
Jaime@wfwin.org
www.workingfamilieswin.org