Kerry Website Updates Audio Clips Of Callers With Uninsured Children

[corbett]

http://www.johnkerry.com/features/voices.html

At first, I was so disappointed in Kerry's concession of the presidency to the shrub that I didn't think that his Kids First initiative would amount to much or that I would care if it did. Well, he has changed my mind.

Naturally, I believe that universal healthcare ought to be an American birthright. However, making a toll-free hotline available to anyone wishing to voice an opinion about uninsured children is civic and political genius!

If you haven't listened to the audio clips on the Kerry PAC website(mp3 format for universal compatibility), you owe it to yourself to spend 30 minutes or so there! I believe that you won't be the same person after you've heard the voice of real parents who have to choose between heating their home and seeking medical care for an ill child!

http://www.johnkerry.com/features/voices.html

[OzarkDem]

1. What about uninsured parents and grandparents?

Lest we forget them, an uninsured parentor grandparent with a serious illness leads to homelessness and sometimes loss of the parent or grandparent?

Insuring children is cheap and easy and has pretty much already been accomplished through Clinton's initiatives. I keep wondering why Dem leaders push this issue without including adults, particularly working women.

I'm sure if you asked the children, they would want the grownups, to have health insurance also.

[globalvillage]

2. Something wrong with helping kids?

I don't think insuring children precludes insuring adults. The Senator's bill does not in any way take away from the need to address adult health care.
Why is it when someone tries to do good, there is always someone to find fault?
Any effort to keep our children healthy, immunized and safe should be supported. I think their parents and grandparents would agree. It doesn't help working women to have to stay home to take care of sick kids or to worry about them while at work. All workers, with or without children are better off when their co-workers are at work and not tending sick kids. Immunized children will not spread illnesses that affect young and old.
Besides, they're children. Please.

I don't think this bill is intended to solve all our problems, but it will address these:

1/4 of children are not fully up to date on their basic immunizations.
1/3 with chronic asthma do not get a prescription for medications they need.
1/2 of uninsured children have not had a well child visit in the past year.
1 in 6 has delayed or unmet medical needs.
1 in 5 has trouble accessing health care.
1 in 4 does not see a dentist annually.
1 in 3 had no health insurance during 2002 and 2003

http://www.johnkerry.com/petition/kidsfirst.php

[corbett]

3. I Agree But This Is The Easiest Bill To Pass

In addition to being less expensive than covering everyone and because it puts us on parallel with many European nations, the best reason to push for universal child health care is that it paints pro-life conservatives into a corner. Beyond the fact that they need to get their noses out of America's collective bedroom, one of the biggest hypocrisies of the pro-life movement is that on the whole, they don't give a damn what happens to unwanted children so long as they aren't aborted.

Forcing Republicans to vote against this bill and/or the shrub to veto it will go along way toward disproving the flawed notion of “compassionateconservatismm.”

[rodeodance]

4. yes, it is a politically astude move

[feistykitty]

9. Let me further add something.

I think that getting healthcare for every child might be a stepping stone to eventually bringing universal healthcare. Sometimes, we can't get all the changes we want right away. We have to bring change on gradually. It stinks that life is like that, but it sometimes is.

[Sugarbleus]

7. If Kerry's plan for "The Children" is a ploy to open doors for

FAMILY healthcare, then I'll go along. Mommies and daddies and grannies who look after their grandchildren ALL need to be covered. A sick provider/caregiver isn't going to help the child in the long run.

I've been pretty pissed off with people constantly using "children" as a tool to get their agenda past using them as a "heart softening" tool.

So far, my grandchild, who I am raising, IS getting thorough healthcare, dental, and vision via the medicaid program--which is about to be cut for people like me but not the child. I only got care because he lived with me as I was considered a "needy caregiver". Now I am using medicare and medicaid (both) for my disabilities. I'm pretty sickly some days. If I die, grandson goes to foster care. That's not good.

Again, I DO hope using "Kids" to acheive a healthcare goal will ultimately cover the entire family, who are obviously in some sort of need elstwise they'd not be in Kerrys Video call-in thing.

I MOST DEFINATELY WANT the children to be Healthy and well. I just don't want to have the rest of us treated as incidental chopped liver. Matter of fact, I go WITHOUT many things, stress over everything just to ensure that the CHILD's needs are covered. This is extremely difficult to hold up under--what if I didn't have any healthcare to cover my own strain related illnesses?

Whole Healthy Families are happy families.

My Opinion.

[pauliedee]

We must spread the word about Kid First act

media trying to ignore it...:dem:

[pauliedee]

5. We must spread the word about Kid First act

media trying to ignore it...:dem:

[pauliedee]

6. I still got his baack

bigtime

[feistykitty]

8. You're preaching to the converted.

If people do not want universal healthcare for all citizens, then it should at least be given to children of poverty. I hope John Kerry continues to push this.