Political Quotes

“10 years ago the Senate created the Children's Health Insurance Program to help States provide health coverage for low-income kids across America. It is known as CHIP. It provides cost-effective health coverage to millions of kids. It is truly the biggest success story in health care in America in the past decade. We have reduced the number of uninsured children in our Nation by one-third. With the help of the CHIP program, my State of Illinois launched a statewide initiative to cover all kids, setting an important precedent for other States to follow. Over 300,000 kids in Illinois have insurance, but there are still thousands more we need to reach. The 15 million uninsured children in America in 1997 are now 9 million nationwide. That is still far too many. Unfortunately, the Bush administration does not view the Senate bill as the carefully crafted compromise it is but sees it as a threat--in their words, ``a step down the path of government-run health care for every American.'' Let me assure them, this bill falls far short of anything resembling universal coverage. It leaves millions of kids still without health insurance and millions of working parents and working adults in a similar uninsured status. But it is progress. The President's proposal to add just $5 billion over the next 5 years isn't enough. At that level, hundreds of thousands of people will likely lose coverage.”