We don't have the most advanced healthcare system in the world if the system doesn't serve everyone that lives here. In fact, we can't even say we have a system. What we have is an elite form of medical service that primarily serves the elite.

We cannot say that we have the best health care in the world if one out of every six or seven of us cannot even access or use that health care.

Surely, millions of mothers lie wide awake at night with those very thoughts. Can you imagine that feeling of living on a precipice with the health of your children in the balance?

While all those mothers lie awake worrying, Americans with insurance no doubt sleep more soundly.

No one he personally knows will ever have to worry about not having sufficient money to see a doctor.

If you are one of the 47 million uninsured Americans, how deeply sad it must be to know that the majority of Americans want to share their resources with you through a government sponsored program like SCHIP but they can't. Why? Because one man, George Bush, vetoed the bill that would make it possible.

All those hopes dashed with the stroke of one man's pen.

The president vetoed a similar bill in October 2007. This is the second time that Congress has sent Bush a bipartisan bill that passed both the Senate and the House of Representatives. This is the second time that Bush has killed children's health care.

The SCHIP legislation (HR 3963) would have covered 10 million uninsured children. It would have completely paid for its increased spending of $35 billion over five years by funding it with a 61-cent-per-pack increase in the federal cigarette tax. The SCHIP legislation that Bush vetoed would have also limited coverage to children in families with annual incomes below 300% of the federal poverty level.

President Bush said that he vetoed the legislation for the same reasons he vetoed the first SCHIP bill. He claimed that it raised taxes and provided health care coverage for children in middle-income families rather than focusing on children in lower-income families.

Bush was wrong before. He's wrong now.

He's just plain wrong, again.

SCHIP doesn't raise taxes and SCHIP is not intended to serve poor children.

Medicaid, not SCHIP, is the medical program for poor children. SCHIP, on the other hand, is intended to serve those children whose parents make too much money to qualify for Medicaid but don't make enough money to be able to afford to purchase healthcare insurance.

Over 47 million Americans are currently living without insurance, over 10 million of which are children.

The President says he opposes this bill because:

• He says it costs too much;
• He says it covers children from families that make too much money; and
• He says the private insurance market can do a better job of covering these kids.

The real facts are:

• The President's request for Iraq war funding would spend more money in two weeks on the war than it costs to fund the health care of 10 million children for a year;
• The bill actually makes it harder, not easier, for states to expand the program to higher-income families; and
• If their parents could get - and could afford - private insurance, these kids would already have coverage.

House Democrats have scheduled a veto override vote for Jan. 23, 2008 (Loven, AP/Denver Post, 12/13).

Denying health-care coverage to children is particularly unconscionable at this holiday time of year and we all have missed another extremely important opportunity to reduce the number of uninsured children in our nation.

In the coming weeks, some in Washington will be advocating a very substantial increase of funding for his occupation of Iraq. Some may want to spend all of our money in Iraq while so many children don't have enough money to have medical checkups.

The politicians in Washington could have done the right thing. Instead, our President used his pen to say: "I forbid 9 to 10 million American children from getting the health care coverage they deserve."

Many of the authors here at Everyday Citizen have written extensively about SCHIP and the health care crisis for all uninsured Americans:

• 81% Support Expanding SCHIP, Including Republicans
• SCHIP Specifically Designed For Middle Class
• Some important facts on SCHIP
• Our Sacred Obligation To Protect Our Nation's Young
• Bush is wrong on policy and ideology for health care
• SCHIP Support Needed
• The Time Has Come for Bold Change
• Those children are our children because they are his
• Using his power to keep doctors away from kids
• Cost of Health Care for Unprotected Children
• John Edwards' critical insight about national health insurance
• Bush may require uninsured children to suffer
• One American City Leads the Way
• Everybody In! Nobody Out!
• Dying in America: Lack of Access to Medical Care
• We'll Just Take Your Arm
• Who cares that we could save both money and lives?
• Children, Families and Health Care
• Bush Opposes Health Care for 3 Million Children
• Primary Concerns
• Are You Kidding Me, Mr. President?
• 27% of Americans Have One
• Using My Voice: Speaking for Those That Can't
• Texas Proud!
• Matters of Life and Death, Literally
• No Halfway Measure Can Be Considered Acceptable

To call or write your legislators to make sure that all of them know that you want them to vote to override Bush's veto - find their phone or addresses here!