[irish_lad]

But it's up to their parents to pay for their health care of get an insurance policy. If you can't afford kids because you aren't working a full time job with benefits, then you should wait to have them.

Oh get off it. That is a VERY simplistic view of the problem. How are we going to deal with the problem NOW? "Sorry kids, no medical coverage or other benefits because your parents should have waited to get a decent job before they had you." Never mind that mom and dad have only a high school diploma and make about $9.50 an hour per person.

WHAT ARE YOU GOING TO DO NOW?

Should kids be made to suffer because their parents did stupid things?

[texastoo]

Hey, Irish,

Maybe you should send Fitz your copy of "It Takes a Village" by Hillary Rodham Clinton.

[FITZ]

No but a lot of times people just decide they don't need to be responsible at all because the government will take care of all their problems. I work with women who dropped Blue Cross Blue Shield partly paid by the employer plans when CHIP was offered. Many said it was easy because they only reported their own income and put down they were single ---which wasn't even true for all of them. With CHIP they can get almost everything for pennies even though they had access to private insurance that isn't outrageous. In this region, over one third the "families" are on some kind of welfare program, many are single mothers with a number of kid --- over one third taking handouts is getting to be scary I think.

[FITZ]

Also many of these same co-workers who dropped private insurance to get CHIP are driving brand new cars ----when these programs get cut, many people don't suffer at all and can make due quite well.

Much of the problems the states are facing is every single program that gets cut back in any way will have many people very outraged ---many were demanding all the social programs be expanded and won't find any cut at all tolerable.