U.S. House passes extension of child health program

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Ending months of deadlock with theWhite House, the U.S. House of Representatives on Wednesdaygave final bipartisan approval to legislation that wouldtemporarily extend the state health insurance program thatcovers about 6.6 million poor children.
The bill, approved by a 411-3 vote, extends the programuntil March 2009. It also delays a scheduled 10 percent pay cutfor Medicare doctors for six months and provides a 0.5 percentincrease instead.
Lawmakers have struggled for years to replace what they seeas a flawed Medicare physician payment policy but have insteadsettled for a series of short-term fixes like this one.
The Senate on Tuesday approved the same bill and the WhiteHouse has indicated that President George W. Bush will sign it.Lawmakers predicted that they would have to revisit Medicarepayments early in 2008.
Bush vetoed more ambitious earlier bills that would haveexpanded the health program to cover about 10 million children,even though they had bipartisan support. The president saidthey were too costly and would push more children intogovernment-run health care instead of private plans.
Bush also objected to raising tobacco taxes to pay for theproposed expansion of the State Children's Health InsuranceProgram.
Democrats had hoped for a short-term extension of theprogram so they would be able reopen the battle before theNovember 2008 presidential and congressional elections. ButRepublicans forced them to extend it through March 2009.
White House press secretary Dana Perino said: "We arepleased that the Congress passed legislation to extend SCHIPuntil March 31, 2009 -- and did so without raising taxes."
"With this bill, we can be assured that children willcontinue to have coverage, and Democrats won't be able to playelection-year politics with children's health," Perino said.
Rep. Rahm Emanuel of Illinois, a member of the HouseDemocratic leadership, said: "What we couldn't resolve, theAmerican people will resolve in November."
The health legislation costs about $6 billion, but was paidfor by savings in other health programs.
(Reporting by Joanne Kenen; Editing by Eric Beech)