tough love for kids with no health insurance but not for the stockholders

Last year when the children's health insurance program came up. There was a core group who opposed the $30 billion over five years or $6 billion per year ($20 per person per year) because it was "too expensive". The Congressional Budget Office estimates that this money would be enough to insure another 4 million children.

Forget the long-term costs that increase health care costs for everyone when children aren't getting routine doctors visits or appropriate treatment. Or the fact that they are children who have no control the economic/social situations they are born into.

As someone who has no health insurance and consistently pays over $1000 a month on health care costs I would gladly pay $20 a year to get 4 million kids lacking health insurance the ability to go see a doctor. This, we can't afford? I can't find health insurance for $20 a year and for what I could pay they would get me on the pre-exiting conditions...

I have to question the policy priorities of my elected officials; Lynn Westmoreland and George Bush don't have to worry about paying for medications. But because the US ranks 37th in the world for health care millions of Americans do (and many can't because of it--which we all pay for in the end via rising health care costs and emergency treatments that would be avoided in other industrialized nations that have universal health care)



now move on to the bailout of freddie mac and fannie mae. While this was a necessary move there was no reason to include perks to stockholders who made bad investments. Kids don't get perks but stockholders do? Democrat and Republican leadership know that kids and poor people don't vote... but stockholders do... I'll outsource this to economist dean baker

Why Is the Government Guaranteeing Fannie and Freddie's Stock Price?

Is there some reason why reporters are not asking this question? There is a clear rationale for making good on Fannie and Freddie's bonds. If the government allowed these bonds to default, not honoring the implicit guarantee, then investors would recognize that these bonds are far more risky than they had believed. This would raise mortgage interest rates for many years to come. It is understandable that we would not want to see this happen, especially in the middle of the housing meltdown.
But what interest does the public have in protecting the share prices of Fannie and Freddie stock? Don't stockholders understand they take a risk when they buy stock? In this case, the stockholders made a bad investment. They are supposed to lose their money (possibly all of it), right?

I have yet to hear any explanation from anyone as to why the government is supporting the share price. (In an NPR interview this morning, Senator Chris Dodd gave an incoherent answer that implied that supporting the share price was somehow tied to backing up the bonds. It isn't.)

In a country that can't fight a few billion dollars to provide funding for child care or children's health care, this multi-billion dollar affirmative action plan for dumb stockholders deserves a little questioning.

(NPR's "Power Breakfast" did an unbelievably awful segment in which it commented that some conservatives oppose bailing out shareholders as "socialism." What? Huh? Is this Planet Earth? Socialism is about giving tax dollars to shareholders? In which volume of Das Kapital does this appear? Conservatives may oppose the bailout for whatever reason, but handing tax dollars to shareholders does not correspond to any definition of socialism I've ever seen.)

--Dean Baker

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Jim Nichols
A Speculative Fiction
www.JimNichols4.com