Earlier this morning, the United States Senate voted 60-39 to pass the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, the health care reform bill that Congress has been crafting through most of 2009.  Vote Kids urges Senators to support this important and historic piece of legislation when they vote on it later this week. Specifically for children, the bill will:

• Extend funding for the Children’s Health Insurance Program and the adoption tax credit to 2015
• Allow foster care children aging out of Medicaid to retain their comprehensive coverage
• Immediately ban denial of coverage for children based on pre-existing conditions
• Expand Medicaid eligibility to children in families from 100% of poverty to 133% of poverty, covering millions of children in this comprehensive program
• Establish a Pregnancy Assistance Fund assist teenaged mothers
• Allow children to stay on their parents’ health insurance until the age 26
• Add billions of dollars for community health centers, which will improve access and delivery of care for millions of children across this country
• Require coverage for basic pediatric services under all health plans as well as oral and vision coverage, which improves a child’s ability to learn and perform at school
• Improve the care our nation’s children receive through developing children’s quality priorities and promoting children’s quality measurement and reporting
• Ensure that all children have access to free preventive services under their health insurance plans and invest in prevention and public health to encourage innovations in health care that prevent illness and disease before they require more costly treatment
• Offer health insurance through an Exchange to families without job-based coverage, or are not eligible for government programs, and provide premium assistance to those who can’t afford it
• Ensure through a health insurance Exchange that children have access to affordable child-only health insurance policies, regardless of whether their parents change jobs, leave a job, move, or get sick

While the bill is not perfect, and we would like to see the SCHIP program funded through 2019 with a requirement that no children are worse off as they move to these untested exchanges, the benefits far outweigh any shortcoming in the bill which future Congresses will have the opportunity to correct.

The simple fact is no bill ever crafted in Washington is perfect. When civil rights laws were passed five decades ago, there was a Civil Rights Act of 1960, a Civil Rights Act of 1964, and a Civil Rights Act of 1968. Each bill was incomplete, but they began a process of better and stronger laws and protections in the future, and created an environment where the debate centered on what is the best to improve the news laws, not the same tired debate of whether or not to begin reform. This bill is real health reform, and it will provide enormous benefits to America’s children and families.

What Can You Do Next?

No effort to reform health care has ever gotten this far and your Senators need to hear from you telling them to support this bill. Click here to contact your Senator.

The bill will now move to a House and Senate conference committee. Vote Kids will be working with other groups to let members of that conference committee know that they can make the bill even better for children such as funding the SCHIP program to 2019 like Senators Jay Rockefeller of West Virginia and Bob Casey of Pennsylvania have been trying to do. The final votes should come early next year.

Happy Holidays and a Great New Year for you and your family, and a hopefully better New Year for the nation’s uninsured and underinsured children.