It didn’t garner nearly the media attention as Tom Daschle’s departure as HHS nominee, but Washington this week just helped 4 million more low-income kids get health care.

“This day has been a long time coming,” DeAnn Friedholm, Consumers Union’s campaign director for health care reform told the PFC blog. “The challenge now is keeping up the momentum to make our health care system work better for more people. The problems facing our economy are directly linked to the costs of our health care system. To address the problems with one, you have to address the problems with the other.”

Making sure low-income children have health care through an expansion of the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP) has long had widespread support across the political spectrum. But it ran headlong into a roadblock in the form of George Bush, who vetoed it twice during his presidency.

In signing the bill into law, President Obama said the measure is a “down payment on my commitment to cover every single American, and it is just one component of a much broader effort to finally bring our health care system into the twenty-first century."

The votes were significant for children’s health care – passing 290-135 in the House. B ut the naysayers signaled the fight ahead against getting all Americans affordable health coverage by offering the right to choose not only private insurance, but a public plan as well-- a concept the insurance industry loathes. Or as Rep. Joe Barton, R-Texas, put it in opposing the government's expansion of coverage for kids: "Do we want to freeze out the private sector for health insurance?"

Pretty sure the thousands of newly laid-off parents who are losing their health insurance and can't afford to buy a private policy, and who just might be able to take their sick kids to the doctor now because of CHIP, don’t particularly care where the coverage is coming from – they just want to keep their families safe and healthy.

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