http://www.timesunion.com

Quoted Text

Spitzer: Expand child health insurance

By CATHLEEN F. CROWLEY, Staff writer
Thursday, January 17, 2008

ALBANY - Gov. Eliot Spitzer's budget proposal will include $37 million to extend health insurance coverage to all New York children, despite the Bush administration's refusal to expand the program.
     
The state will foot the bill, Spitzer said during a news conference this morning at Philip Schuyler Elementary School on Central Avenue.
New York already insures 396,000 children under the State Children's Health Insurance Program (SCHIP). Spitzer wants to double the number of children, leaving no child uninsured.
Of the new children Spitzer wants to insure, 320,000 already qualify for the SCHIP and would be eligible for federal matching dollars. The rest would become eligible under Spitzer's plan to increase the income limit from 250 percent of the federal poverty level to 400 percent.
Spitzer will unveil his proposed budget on Tuesday.

I'd like to know where all this extra money is going to come from to fund the extra kids that will be added to the program.

Walmart and the folks who will be penalized for not paying for their own health insurance----just like Massachusetts.......pay attention.....coming to your backyard soon.....they make us vote with our money because they know it moves us.......

Perhaps they will increase the cigarette tax like they discussed once before. You just know that they will have to tax SOMETHING! Or why not take all of these millions and give it to the hospitals that are already running in the red. The Ellis, St. Clares and Bellevue Hospital fiasco is just the beginning of government run hospital. Spitzer didn't throw all those millions at these hospitals if he didn't have a stake in it.

Better get your blood tests, MRI, CAT Scans and anything else you need now. Otherwise if you wait, you will be holding a voucher that will allow you these test 'when available'. Kind of like...'take a number' and wait in line.