Day of the White Roses: Traveling on the public's dime while Keiki get sick

The right-wing blogosphere is buzzing with excitement when the headline, “Hawaii ends universal child health care program just months after adopting it” popped up on the Associated Press (AP) wire. Since Hillary Clinton brought up universal healthcare as her project while she was First-Lady, the right-wing (often backed by the multi-billion dollar insurance companies) have been attacking her and the idea of health-care for all. Dennis Smith of The Foundry, a blogging website connected to the Heritage Foundation, writes, “Hawaii has learned what some have known all along–that the cost of free care is unaffordable.” However, with close inspection of the AP article, 2,000 children enrolled in the program will have their health care coverage dropped. Dr Kenny Fink, the administrator for Med-QUEST at the Department of Human Services, offers this as a reason for the discontinuation of the program, "People who were already able to afford health care began to stop paying for it so they could get it for free… I don't believe that was the intent of the program.” In other words, since some people abused the program, everyone in the program will be punished.
The child care program was initially designed “to cover every child from birth to 18 years old who didn't already have health insurance - mostly immigrants and members of lower-income families (AP).” It has been fairly commonplace for immigrants to be demonized in the American political arena –the current financial crisis involving home mortgages has been blamed on poor immigrants. Michelle Malkin, the self-loathing conservative talk show guest states, “There's one giant paternal elephant in the room that has slipped notice… illegal immigration and open-border policies fueled the mortgage crisis… [The California Central Valley] also happen[s] to be some of the nation's largest illegal alien sanctuaries. Half of the mortgages to Hispanics are sub prime…” According to Ms. Malkin, the poor are to blame. They forced the banks to give them sub prime loans, they forced speculators and paper-shufflers to wage bets on the value of the mortgages. In Malkin World, the poor are always to blame. Never mind that the poor are the ones foreclosed upon and evicted. Nevertheless, I’m not surprised that the Keiki Care Package is being shut down. This is just another example of a government program being shut down because of so-called “abuse.”

If funding is such a big problem for the Keiki Care program to continue, may I suggest a few budget cuts that Governor Lingle could implement. First, let’s end Lingle’s free health care. Surely, she can afford it. It wasn’t that long ago that she attended the Republican National Convention. Who paid for that trip? Secondly, the people of Hawai`i State employees are not allowed to endorse political candidates. For instance, a professor at University of Hawaii cannot endorse Obama or Nader, because they are paid by the State of Hawaii. So, why is Lingle allowed to stump for her Republican presidential candidates? Isn’t she the top State employee? Isn’t Hawai`i having a current financial crisis of its own? Yet, our top employee is using our money to travel around the Continental US, stumping for a candidate who has no chance of winning the State of Hawaii electoral votes. Lets rescind her travel and campaigning allowance and use the money we saved in order to save the Keiki Care program.
The abuse of the Keiki Care program is no reason to discontinue the entire program. Certainly, some provision could amend the program and make sure that it works for the people it is intended to help. Linda Lingle has sold out the people of Hawai`i again and it is time for her to go.

Linda Lingle lives in Public Housing