More Issues In the News

Nearly 14 percent percent of North Carolina’s children lack health insurance. When children don’t have insurance they are less likely to receive preventive health care and more likely to end up in expensive emergency rooms for routine care.

Congress recently passed the State Children’s Health Insurance bill to address this problem. President Bush vetoed the bill. An attempt to override the veto fell short by about a dozen votes in the House.

Unfortunately, Rep. Robin Hayes voted against the bill and overriding the veto, which means there will be a shortfall in North Carolina’s SCHIP program of $49.5 million next year. North Carolina will be forced to cut kids from the program.

Fortunately, a bipartisan group of members of Congress are working on a new compromise SCHIP bill that will increase the number of children covered by the health insurance program.

Contact Rep. Hayes and tell him to support the SCHIP bill. More than 300,000 uninsured kids are counting on him.

Rob Thompson,
Policy Advocate, NCPIRG, rob@ncpirg.org
Raleigh