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Harkin says veto would hurt health coverage for children

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By Todd Dorman | Tuesday, August 7, 2007 12:10 AM CDT | () comments

DES MOINES — Some Iowa children covered by a state health insurance program could lose coverage if President Bush vetoes a congressional funding increase, U.S. Sen. Tom Harkin warned Monday.

Harkin, D-Iowa, visited a Des Moines hospital to make a pitch for a bipartisan bill raising the federal cigarette tax from

39 cents to $1 per pack and pumping $35.4 billion into children’s health coverage nationwide over five years. A share of that money would pay for Hawk-I children’s health coverage in Iowa.

The bill has the support of

68 senators, including U.S. Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, but President Bush has threatened to veto the measure. He’s proposing a $5 billion funding increase.

“We want to send a message to the president, don’t veto this bill,” Harkin said. “We’d actually have to take some kids off of the Hawk-I program if the president’s budget went through.”

Hawk-I, which provides government dollars to help families pay for private insurance, now covers 22,000 children in the state.

The program also has steered tens of thousands of Iowa’s poorest children toward Medicaid health coverage.

State officials are embarking on an outreach effort with hopes of covering roughly 10,000 more children with Hawk-I in each of the next four years. But they say that cannot happen unless the president accepts a larger funding hike.

“It’s quite clear that at the level proposed by the president it would be completely inadequate to cover the demand in Iowa,” Roger Munns, spokesman for the Iowa Department of Human Services, said.

Sunday, however, several Republican presidential hopefuls hammered the congressional plan during a televised debate in Iowa. Some predicted large-scale expansion of the program is a step toward socialized medicine.

“Do you think the solution to providing more and better health care is, one, that we should have more government solutions involved, or should there be more market-based solutions involved?” said U.S. Sen. Sam Brownback of Kansas, who voted against the measure.

“Instead, you’ve got the Democrats doing a step-by-step march toward a socialized one government-pay system,” Brownback said.

The House and Senate have yet to agree on the final language of the funding bill, so the legislation will not be debated again until after Congress takes its summer break.

Harkin predicted the Senate would stand firm despite Bush’s threat.

“If the president vetoes this bill, the Senate will vote to override,” Harkin said.

Todd Dorman can be contacted at (515) 243-0138 or at todd.dorman@lee.net.