Health insurance for All Kids, a Gov. Rod Blagojevich program, should be applauded. The Oct. 11 Northern Star stated 253,000 Illinois children are without health insurance. That is simply unacceptable.

Some Republicans, such as Robert Pritchard, 70th District State Rep., argued, “We could open ourselves up to more costs” by becoming a magnet for people in states without similar programs. The All Kids program is specifically designed to discourage this by incorporating residency requirements.

Uninsured families would have to live in Illinois for a year and remain uninsured for that time. That’s a pretty good safeguard against abuse. Who would go through the added expenses of moving to an entirely different state only to scam a health insurance program one year later? That doesn’t even make sense.

Meanwhile, major medical associations in Illinois, including the prominent Illinois Hospital Association and Illinois State Medical Society have not gone so far as to endorse this program.

Lawrence Haspel, senior vice president for the Metropolitan Chicago Healthcare Council told the Chicago Tribune Friday that the governor “ought to be applauded” for the effort. “But to support a plan when you haven’t seen a plan, that’s pretty hard to do.”

Not that hard, 75 percent of Americans blindly supported the non-existent plan to invade Iraq in 2003.

This plan will result in more children receiving health care they may not otherwise have access to. What’s bad about that?

The plan will be funded through savings in Medicaid that should amount to about $57 million next year according to a spokesman for the governor. Pritchard pointed out the state is $1.3 billion behind on Medicaid payments. Well, at least we will be able to remove $57 million from that list next year. By the fifth year of the program that amount would be $93 million.

In the same Oct. 11 Star story associate professor of economics Virginia Wilcox-Gok said the long-term growth rate of health care costs would exceed the initial cost savings of the program.

That may well be true, but to deny 253,000 children health care based on that would just be downright cruel.

The real issues causing the spike in health care costs need to be addressed, simply not providing health care to children is not going fix those problems.

Americans are constantly touting this nation as “the greatest country on Earth.” It’s time to stop paying that phrase lip-service and make it a reality. All Kids is a good start.

Agree? Disagree? Contact us at

www.northernstar.info.