Calling all moms to lobby for kids and health insurance

Facts: Among developed nations, ours is the only one that does not provide universal health insurance to children. It has the highest rates of infant and childhood mortality in the developed world. In addition, “low income children are more likely than other children to have virtually every measured chronic or acute condition and are more likely to be limited by these conditions.”

Needed: a few good moms to nag Congress to help change these facts, which are national trash in need of taking out.

Someday soon Congress will decide if it is acceptable that 9 million children in the richest nation on earth have no health insurance and therefore do not get all the health care they need. The Congress will do so by deciding whether to put about $90 billion over five years into the federal budget to fund the State Children’s Health Insurance Program or S-CHIP, the federal program, which above Medicaid, expands health insurance coverage to the children of lower income, working Americans parents. S-CHIP currently insures more than 6 million of our kids; if expanded as proposed it could cover the other 9 million.

In an ideal world just having to look in the mirror each day would be enough to convince U.S. senators and representatives to fix the national embarrassment of uninsured children. It is not an ideal world, however, (in case you missed the news) which is why I am looking for a few good moms out there to help them do the right thing. That’s right, if you are a mom and think that every child such as yours should have the right to basic health care, I want you to be a Washington lobbyist on behalf of the S-CHIP program.

This will be lobbying on the cheap; for you as a lobbyist there will be no three-martini lunches and no golf trips to Scotland with congressmen. But if there’s no gallivanting in it for you, there will be a little glory for making a difference in the lives of millions of children, because having health insurance does just that.

Children who do not have health insurance are less likely to get the health care they need than children who have health insurance. They are less likely to get all the vaccinations they need against diseases such as meningitis and measles which can damage their brains and even kill them, against polio, against whooping cough and ear infections, and more. The care they get in hospitals is sometimes less complete than it should be. They are less likely to have a regular physician, and more likely to use the emergency department when ill.

If you were the mom of an uninsured child (and many of you have been) you would know what it was like to wonder what care your child should have that he or she will have to go without because you cannot afford it. You would wonder where the money was going to come from to pay for prescriptions your child needed. Your child would be missing well child checks with the doctor, and you would be wondering about problems that might be missed as a result. If you were a mom, you would do just about anything to change all of that.

So be the mom for a moment of a child without health insurance, and use that moment to change that child’s life by being a health care lobbyist in Washington, D.C. Call or e-mail your U.S. representative and senators and ask them to support the extra money to expand the S-CHIP program to cover all of our children who currently do not have health insurance. It’s that simple to give Congress this important shot in the can.

Phone 1-800-828-0498 toll free and ask for your U.S. senator or representative, or go to the Web site www.senate.gov to e-mail your senator, www.house.gov to e-mail them. Contact three each; they love to hear from you.

This expansion of insurance for children is supported by a broad range of Republicans and Democrats in Washington, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the American Medical Association and many others. It is one of those few issues that cut across party lines and other divides in the national debate about universal insurance coverage. You ought to be able to get behind it whether you are a blue dog Democrat or a red dog Republican.

The reason this unlikely collection of bedfellows agree on the expansion of S-CHIP when they normally could not even agree that night follows day is that S-CHIP expansion is the final piece of the puzzle in universal insurance for American children. The combination of Medicaid coverage of poor children, expanded S-CHIP for lower income children, and employer-based insurance coverage of employee children is, in effect, what Medicare is for Americans over the age of 65, universal insurance coverage. If there is a consensus about universal insurance in America, it is that all children should be covered.

This is your chance to shake and remake this country as we know it; universal insurance for children would be landmark legislation, making it as much a right as Medicare is for older adults. It is your chance to make America’s commitment to our children that they are as precious as we all say they are. Anything less is just a card with no present.

And if the members of Congress cannot provide health insurance for all of our children, not only should they be sent to bed without supper, and not be given health insurance for themselves until every child in America has it, I think they should look for other work. The job does not get any more important than guaranteed health care for children, and if you can’t do that job, you are not doing the job at all.

(Oh, and dads should call too. I just know who usually takes the kids to get their shots.)

Erik Steele D.O., a physician in Bangor, is chief medical officer of Eastern Maine Healthcare systems and is on the staff of several hospital emergency rooms in the region.