Congress was busy trying to repeal Obamacare so they forgot about the Children’s Health Insurance Program, which protects nine million children. They let it expire. You read that right.
“The program, created under a 1997 law passed with bipartisan support during the administration of President Bill Clinton, provided coverage for children in families with low and moderate incomes as well as to pregnant women. It was instrumental in lowering the percentage of children who were uninsured from nearly 14 percent when it started to 4.5 percent in 2015. It was last reauthorized in 2015 and was due to be renewed by Sept. 30, 2017.
“Amid unsuccessful efforts to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act, the Republican-led Congress allowed the CHIP deadline to pass without action.
“The program was primarily funded by the federal government, with states paying a good deal less. States still have some CHIP money available, but if Congress does not act quickly to restore the program, they will start to run out. Several states and the District of Columbia are expected to drain CHIP funding by the end of this year and many more by March 2018…
“The program cost the federal government about $13.6 billion in 2016. The program provided services that included, according to the government’s website:
“Routine checkups
Immunizations
Doctor visits
Prescriptions
Dental and vision care
Inpatient and outpatient hospital care
Laboratory and X-ray services
Emergency services”
How can we allow nine million children to go without medical insurance for basic needs?
What kind of a country are we?
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Who is responsible for this fiasco? Where the h— are the Democrats? I blame every single Congressman for neglect.
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Only the majority party controls which legislation gets on the docket. Democrats cannot make the GOP do anything. I doubt that the GOP will ever renew this program. They have a single goal. Get rid of every social program so that billionaires get tax cuts. The rest of us can die.
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We are governed by a President and members of Congress who care about little other than maximizing wealth, profits, and votes for more of the same.
They are hardhearted and often vindictive. They were elected by many who are considered “a burden” on the economy and undeserving of any generosity, least of all their children.
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There never is money for healthcare, even for children. There is always money for the military and the NSA. We are a nation that is more interested in killing than helping people. Our lack of caring about spending money to help people (and children) has been demonstrated many times.
The GOP and tRump are now very interested in tax breaks for the wealthy and lowering corporate tax. This comes is much more important than caring about citizens.
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What kind of a country are we?
The U.S. developed on the bodies of Native People and slaves. It has been at war for 222 out of its 239 years (93% of the time). Its political-economic system is based on greed and survival of the most brutal. After slavery, Jim Crow kept Blacks down, and then, the “War on Drugs” incarcerated them as well as Hispanics all out of proportion to their percentage of the population. Native People have been relegated to poverty-stricken reservations.
Continual bloated war budgets since 1945 have been the excuse for insufficient government spending to create non-defense jobs, repair crumbling infrastructure, modernize public transportation, provide free college, and provide health care for all of us.
The global empire of wars, bases, and drone murders has killed millions of people since 1945, most of them dark-skinned, and made the U.S. justifiably hated as the greatest threat to world peace.
Trump and the two corporate parties are the inevitable culmination of at least 70 years of moral and fiscal corruption, indifference to the needs of ordinary people, arrogant corporate heads and legally-bribed politicians, and the enduring lie of U.S. “exceptionalism” used to justify the brutality and mass murders committed by every administration since 1945.
As Noam Chomsky said: “If the Nuremberg laws were applied, then every post-war American president would have been hanged.”
That is what kind of country the U.S. is, and has been since its creation.
I reject the use of “we” in the question because I know most readers of this blog are NOT among the violent, murderous criminals who have run the U.S. empire into its present condition.
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Well spoken. I have been saying for a few years, “Stop the killing”. We have destroyed enough lives.
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Here’s another one.
GREED & White supremacy:
Go to YouTube and search: Hawai’i’s Last Queen. It’s a PBS special in 9 parts on YouTube. The greedy missionaries with the help of the military took everything.
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What kind of country is the United States under the GOP and the Trump administration?
It is a country ruled by hate and if you can’t become wealthy, then screw you, the working class, and rot. That’s the country Trump and the GOP want.
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Most of the Democrats too, Lloyd. Most of them.
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As a good friend of mine just said about this, “Perhaps the Reptilians do exist.”
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Disgraceful to have allowed this to lapse.
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