The Texas Health Care Catastrophe

No pun intended, but the lack of health care in Texas is sickening. Health insurance provides for one of the most crucial of basic human needs. Medicine, as a necessity, closely follows air, water, and food, and its importance should be obvious and beyond question to anyone. However, according to statistics released by Centers for Disease Control (http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/hus/hus06.pdf), Texas has had the largest percentage of uninsured citizens for more than a decade. Ten years of being dead last, and proposals to begin mending this statewide atrocity continually fall short.
President Bush is threatening to veto a bill that would grant health insurance to an extra three million children from low-income families stating, “If Congress continues to insist upon expanding health care through the SCHIP [State Children's Health Insurance Program] program — which, by the way, would entail a huge tax increase for the American people — I'll veto the bill.” With the majority of American’s currently against funding the Iraqi conflict, it seems reasonable that taxes could simply be more appropriately allocated without being increased. Furthermore, in an article in the Austin American Statesman (http://www.statesman.com/news/content/region/legislature/stories/07/10/0710frew.html), author April Castro explains that the additional health care funding would increase preventative care measures. Castro quotes Nancy Seale, chairwoman of the department of pediatric dentistry at the Baylor College of Dentistry in Dallas, who said “we would expect there to be a decrease in occurrences and severity (of preventable dental disease), so we would have less children who are in pain, less children who have to go to the operating room under general anesthesia, and that would save a lot of money.” The health and monetary advantages of preventative medicine are not being questioned, and for those reasons, this bill should not be in question.