Hey Dave Camp,

You sit on a Medicare committee, have experience in welfare and Medicare reform and you’re a champion for preventative health care.

Your background, your site says, has led you to become a leading voice for the adopted and those in foster care.

You have three children.

Rep. Camp, you sound like the ideal person to do the right thing and reject your government health care until the State Children’s Health Insurance Program business is finished. It’s not right that your kids get health care and you get a relatively large salary ($165,200/year) while others have no coverage.

You say on your Web site that you oppose this SCHIP legislation because you support small government.

SCHIP opponents such as yourself say this bill would have doubled the cost of the current program and would cost $35 billion over five years.

President Bush’s prescription drug plan, which you supported, has an estimated cost of $675 billion and allows retired people to buy Viagra with at least a 50 percent subsidy on taxpayers’ backs. But children don’t need Viagra, so is a health care plan really that necessary for them?

After all, children’s cough medicine is being yanked off shelves – eliminating health care for children is bound to remove some dangerous medicine at the same time it removes needed care. We’ll call it a draw.

The opponents of SCHIP say extending the program will not get more people in, it will just allow richer people into the club while half a million children will continue to be unregistered.

But the big claim was that families making up to $83,000/year would get free children’s health care. That was a request for New York families that was denied. More than 90 percent of the recipients of the bill would be from families making less than $41,000/year.

I can understand if there are problems with the bill. But the most egregious points have been dismissed by that notorious socialist rag, The Washington Post, among others.

Rep. Camp, shrink government if that’s what you believe in. But do it across the board.

If it’s about inroads, let’s get rid of Medicare and prescription drug plans. But first, let’s sack insurance for Congress.

So I call on you, Rep. Camp, to make a tough decision and introduce legislation opposing your own health care on the grounds that is an incremental step toward socialized medicine.

If it’s about politics, so be it. Just don’t say you’re all for children while you oppose coverage for 3.6 million of the 9.4 million uninsured children just to make a statement about small government.

Sick kids don’t give a crap about the size of government.

Until a year ago, Republicans didn’t appear to either for some time.

Rep. Camp, you are in a unique position to stand up for your beliefs.

The SCHIP legislation failed by 13 votes. Let’s hope your re-election fails by a few more, unless you change your mind.

E-mail the author: defaultuser