Urgent: Tell Congress to support health care for America's children

Congress is expected to vote this week on reauthorization of the State Children's Health Insurance Plan (SCHIP), which provides health care coverage to low-income children.

George W. Bush has threatened to veto it, so we need enough votes to override a veto. We can't let our nation's poor children suffer for Bush's greed.

Please read the action alert below from the League of Women Voters and click one of the links to tell your Senators and Representative to vote for children's health.

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This summer the Senate and the House passed bills to reauthorize the State Children's Health Insurance Plan (SCHIP), which provides health care coverage to millions of low-income children. This past Friday congressional leaders announced they had come to a bipartisan, bicameral agreement in a conference committee. Votes in both the House and Senate are expected this week so we must take action to encourage Congress to pass SCHIP reauthorization legislation at the $50 billion funding level NOW!

Take action today to help insure America's children!

Over the past ten years, SCHIP has dramatically improved children's access to health care, and has made great strides in covering children. The program covers children from low-income families who do not qualify for Medicaid. As of today, SCHIP is only authorized through September 30, 2007, which is fast approaching. It is the right time to improve and strengthen SCHIP to further increase access to affordable, comprehensive, equitable, and quality health coverage for all of our nation's children. As a direct result of this program the percentage of low-income children in the United States without health coverage has fallen by one-third in the past decade even as employer-based coverage has decreased.

The conference bill will include up to $50 billion over five years to provide health care for about half of America's nine million uninsured children. It is important to continue our nation's great progress in covering more uninsured, low-income children. We hope you will send a message to your Senators and Representatives to encourage them to pass the bill at the $50 billion funding level.

Without SCHIP millions of children whose families cannot afford health care coverage will go uninsured!

TAKE ACTION!