“The Bush Administration should be helping Massachusetts and other states with innovative expansions of health insurance, as it did last year, instead of applying a chokehold to a successful federal program that covers low-income children. Congress needs to provide money to maintain the program and apply it to the millions of young people who still are without health insurance. Under the bipartisan leadership of Senators Edward Kennedy and Orrin Hatch, Congress created the State Children’s Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) 10 years ago to fill one of the most distressing gaps in the patchwork US healthcare system. Many children in financially strapped families had to do without coverage if their circumstances did not fit the stringent criteria of the Medicaid program for poor people.” (03/01/07)