Supporters Of Expanded Health Insurance Program Fail In Override Effort

CAPITOL HILL (AP) – A plan to expand a government health insurance program doesn’t have quite enough support in the House to override a presidential veto. Supporters fell 13 votes short of overturning the veto today.

House Democrats were hoping to expand the program so that it would cover 10 million children. It had passed the Senate with a bigger margin than would be necessary.

The program, known as S-CHIP, now subsidizes health care insurance coverage for about 6 million children at a cost of about five billion dollars a year. The vetoed measure would have added four million more children, most of them from low-income families.

The bill would have paid for the increase through a hike in the federal tax on cigarettes.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said coverage for 10 million children for a year could be purchased for “the cost of less than 40 days in Iraq.”

But Republican opponents said the bill would encourage too many middle-income families to use government-subsidized insurance instead of their own private insurance.