"... you just go to an emergency room."

The "beating heart" of political conservatism was on display for all to see at the White House the other day. Its cold, callous, cynical heart that is. George W. Bush decided that it would be too much of a "budget-buster" to sign into law the State Children's Health Insurance Program (S-chip) bill that had passed both houses of Congress with bipartisan support. And this from the President for whom all ink is red. The program has broad support and provides the only health insurance for millions of American kids. There was a desire from legislators on both sides of the aisle to expand the program--rather modestly, if you consider it in the same light as, say, a 100 billion supplemental appropriation for the Iraq boondoggle, er, war--to cover the remaining 9-10 million low income kids who still have no health insurance. But apparently even this bipartisan bill with such obvious positive benefits to children and the future of the Nation was too much for Mr. Bush.

The President doesn't seem to see the problem, "People have access to health care in this country, after all, you just go to an emergency room." he quipped. He also seemed most disturbed that this was an attempt to "Federalize," or "socialize," health care in this country. Apparently Mr. Bush is unaware that essentially all of our historic allies, the industrialized West, currently have, and have had socialized medicine for decades, and that, the majority of citizens in those countries wouldn't want it any other way. Apparently Mr. Bush has also never heard of the Medicare or Medic-aid programs. But, for Mr. Bush our kid's futures are much less important than the profits of health insurance companies that literally make a killing off of suffering people. You see, most modern societies have long ago reached a consensus that health care is a human right, not something that should be left to the whims of the marketplace, and certainly not something that should be profited from. In fact, I'm willing to bet that most of us would probably view as obscene the notion of "for profit" health care; that is, providing care simply to those who can afford to pay for it themselves. But that is essentially what we have in this country. About 50 million Americans cannot afford health insurance, so, if they get sick, they do have to find an emergency room, and hope they will get the necessary care. We can be sure they would never find it in Bush's White House.

Of course the White House rolled out its spin-meisters (and mistresses) in an effort to try and control the damage. Dana Perino and Ed Gillespie insisted the President really was interested in seeing that kids get health insurance, it was just that the S-chip bill was too much of "federal" solution. Let's forget for a moment that government run programs actually do a better job if you consider administrative costs. Medicare is much better than the insurance industry average, for example. Why isn't profit ever considered an administrative cost? Gillespie in particular made some bizarre claims on NPR's All Things Considered. He insisted that a main reason for Bush's veto was that the bill allowed too many adults into the program or to remain in it. Host Robert Seigel remarked, correctly, that the bill in fact did not support adults and in fact removed those presently on it. This follows a standard Bush White House pattern, when the facts don't fit, start making up your own "facts."