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Grassroots Community Praises Action on SCHIP That Lifts Bar for Immigrant Children
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Friday, Jan 16, 2009Washington - The House overwhelmingly passed an expansion of the State Children's Health Insurance Program this Wednesday by a vote of 289-139. Yesterday, the Senate Finance Committee marked up a similar bill in committee. Both versions expand SCHIP to cover close to another 4 million low income, uninsured children. Both the Senate mark-up and the House bill allow states to lift a five-year coverage delay for legal immigrant children and pregnant women. The full Senate will take up the proposal next week, setting the stage for the new President to sign an expansion of SCHIP almost immediately.
The following is a series of statements from the grassroots community and the Campaign for Community Values:
“We are pleased to see Congress moving forward with SCHIP expansion; lifting the five-year bar to immigrant children and pregnant women is both the right and the smart thing to do. We all benefit when everyone in our community is healthy. There is no practical or moral reason to exclude families that work and pay taxes from our health care system,” said G. Smith of Northwest Federation of Community Organizations and Health Rights Organizing Project (HROP) coordinator.
“There are 1 in 9 children uninsured in the U.S., and the number jumps to 1 in 4 in the Korean American community. We know all too well the difficulties parents face in paying for the health care costs of their children. In these particularly challenging economic times, a program that provide health care to all kids is the kind of policy solution we need,” said EunSook Lee, executive director, National Korean American Service & Education Consortium (NAKASEC).
“Passing SCHIP is a no-brainer if we want to get our country moving again in a way that we can all be proud of. We will continue to show our support for this legislation with the immigrant inclusion provision, as it goes to the floor of the Senate and on to President-elect Obama to sign,” said Gabe Gonzalez, campaign director, Campaign for Community Values.
The Center for Community Change convenes the Health Rights Organizing Project. HROP is organizing the “America’s Future Starts with Healthy Children” art exhibit from January 23 – 28, 2009 in Washington, D.C. For more information, visit www.iwanttobehealthytoo.org. Member organizations from HROP in Colorado, Idaho, Iowa, Kansas, Maine, Massachusetts, Michigan, Montana, New Mexico, New York, North Dakota, Oregon and Washington state weighed in with their Senators who sit on the Senate Finance committee about the need to expand SCHIP.
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The Campaign for Community Values is a national coalition of more than 200 grassroots organizations from across the country advancing policies to make America finally work for all of us. The initiative is led by the Center for Community Change, a 40 year-old national organization dedicated to building the field of community organizing, with hundreds of local organizations nationwide.
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