SCHIP: Fossella's staff write LTE's

On August 1, 2007 Vito Fossella voted against SCHIP, which would provide insurance for children to low and moderate income families. Since then his spin team has been trying to portray this as a vote to protect Medicare. Yesterday his press secretary, Craig Donnor, and not Vito himself no surprise there, replied to a Letter to the Edtior in the Advance stating;

"Mr. O'Leary wrongly portrays this issue as a battle of rich against poor. The unfortunate reality is that the Democratic Congress pitted seniors against their grandchildren in a fight for access to needed health care. In contrast, Senate Democrats passed a bipartisan bill that expanded SCHIP and contained no cuts to Medicare." - Craig Donnor

Mr. Donnor would be well off reading the post here from last night about the AARP praise for the passage of the SCHIP bill that Fossella voted against, and lambasted specifically NY State members of Congress who voted against the bill. The AARP supports the SCHIP bill;

The bill strengthens Medicare's programs for low-income older Americans that help them get the health care and prescription drugs they need, while reducing excess payments to private Medicare Advantage plans. The CHAMP Act also reauthorizes and strengthens the SCHIP program, which already provides millions of children with affordable health coverage, and allows states to cover more than 5 million eligible uninsured low-income children who are not enrolled in the program.

Mr. Donnor and Rep. Fossella can continue to say they support SCHIP, but when the vote took place Fossella voted NO. When they then said the problem was not SCHIP it was Medicare cuts the AARP shut down those claims and state the bill strengthens Medicare.