Having proper health care is essential for every living being. However, as of late, the basic right to affordable and top notch care for all Americans is somehow still in questions.
Nearly three months after the lapse of federal funding for CHIP, the Children’s Health Insurance Program, Congress did vote to extend its funding in a move to avert a government shutdown, but the most defenseless of our nation are still left hanging in the balance as to decisions on their health care.
This temporary bandaid for families that don’t qualify for either Medicaid or private insurance has left families and physicians uneasy as to what the new year will bring, as several states in the U.S. have already notified their families that their children may lose coverage all together.
The CHIP program is essential for the well-being of millions of children from the critically ill to those who just have a common cold. The costs of care for many parents without this coverage could literally be the difference between life and death for their child.
Although children do not account for the majority of health care expenditures in the country, CHIP representing only $16 billion of the total Medicaid spending, translating into 3 percent of the total expenditures, children will be the most affected if decisions are not made to help get their medical funding solidly in place.
CHIP does not only affect a certain population of children. Ultimately, health care for all children will be in jeopardy. Physicians work tirelessly to protect and save the lives of the most vulnerable-the young and old. It is time to remember that, “the test of progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much, it is whether we provide enough for those who have too little,” President Franklin D. Roosevelt (1937).
