Earl Pomeroy: “I got to be a father late in life so that now I have got an 11-year-old and a 14-year-old at home. And last winter I had…”

“I got to be a father late in life so that now I have got an 11-year-old and a 14-year-old at home. And last winter I had a real long, miserable, anxious weekend, one that any parent probably has experienced. I had a sick kid and I didn't know what to do. A fever higher than I was comfortable with. The disposition of my little fellow, very different than usual. And in the end, we sought some medical care. I have spent a lot of time thinking about that weekend as we have thought about this SCHIP because there are families with sick young'uns and they don't know what to do, but they cannot afford medical care. They don't have coverage. They don't have Medicaid for the poorest of the poor. But by virtue of working in a place that doesn't provide employer-provided health insurance, by virtue of earning an income that doesn't let them afford it, they're uncovered. What do you do? The cost of one trip to an emergency room is a month's rent. What do you do? You pray and you hope that the little one gets better. And, fortunately, they often do. But, tragically, they sometimes don't. So when that long-delayed trip to the doctor or the hospital occurs, we have got a runaway health issue that the parent has had to sit and watch develop, all the while trying to figure out how to handle this situation. We can make this problem go away for 10 million children by moving this legislation forward. To me, this isn't a Democrat, this isn't a Republican matter.”