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Monday: July 16, 2007

Dear friend,

The following message is being desperately spread by The Children’s Defense Fund. We are asking ALL of our members to join the fight:

Over the past ten years, the State Children's Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) has been effective at reducing the number of uninsured children. However, nine million children are still uninsured, and millions more are underinsured. That means millions of children in America are not getting the care they need to lead healthy and happy lives. Funding for SCHIP expires this year, and, at any moment, Congress will consider renewing the program and, ultimately, decide how many children will remain uninsured. Take a few minutes right now to send a message to Congress that anything less than health coverage for all children is unacceptable! It's easy, it only takes a few minutes, and children cannot wait.

We need $50 billion to insure every child in America. The Senate is proposing $35 billion, but the President only wants $5 billion, which will reduce the number of insured children. On Saturday, Bush Administration officials announced that it would veto this legislation because it doesn’t want to spend the extra money to insure additional children. The proposed legislation is still inadequate but it would add four million children by raising the excise tax on cigarettes.

In a recent sermon I told the story of Deamonte Driver, the 12-year-old homeless boy who died when his mother could not find a dentist to pull an abscessed tooth because he did not have health insurance. In the end, he received hundreds of thousands of dollars in healthcare to try and save his life, when an $80 tooth extraction was all that was needed. Millions of children are treated in emergency rooms because they don’t have the health insurance needed to be able to go to a family physician. This is no way to treat God’s precious children. Why is it that America is now the ONLY industrialized nation where healthcare is not a civil right?

Contact your senators TODAY and tell them that you expect them to make this bill veto proof. This isn’t about partisan politics; it is about the children. We easily find the money for war. Tell them to find the money for the children.

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Sincerely,

Rev. Michael S. Piazza
President

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Say what you will about Michael Moore. He makes waves and, more importantly, stirs debate on important issues with his talents like no one else I know. With almost everything in his 2004 movie, Fahrenheit 9/11, turning out to be true (including the recent revelations about the Walter Reed Hospital problems), his credibility is riding high now.

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