Bush Budget Puts Future of Health Care for All Children in Jeopardy, According to National Pediat...( Budget Kills Funding for Children...),Health

Budget Kills Funding for Children's Physicians

WASHINGTON, Feb. 1 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- President Bush will release his Fiscal Year 2009 budget on Monday. In it he puts access to health care for all children in jeopardy because the budget eliminates the bipartisan Children's Graduate Medical Education (CHGME) Program. The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP), Academic Pediatric Association (APA), American Pediatric Society (APS) Association of Medical School Pediatric Department Chairs (AMSPDC), National Association of Children's Hospitals (N.A.C.H.), and Society for Pediatric Research (SPR)-representing the vast majority of pediatricians and child health experts-urge Congress to reject the request and instead demonstrate its commitment to children's health care by fully funding CHGME in FY 2009.

Less than two weeks after the U.S. House of Representatives only narrowly sustained the President's veto of SCHIP legislation that would have provided health coverage for almost 4 million additional eligible children and adolescents, President Bush has asked Congress in his FY 2009 budget request to eliminate the bipartisan CHGME program. CHGME provides over $301 million annually in indispensable investment in the nation's nearly 60 independent children's teaching hospitals. They train 35 percent of all pediatricians, half of all pediatric subspecialists, and the large majority of the nation's pediatric research scientists.

Children's hospitals that receive CHGME funding account for less than 1 percent of all hospitals, but they provide half or more of all inpatient care for children with serious conditions such as heart defects, cancer, serious burns, and organ transplants. They also house the nation's premier centers of pediatric research, and are the safety net for children of low-income families in their regions. "Children's hospitals provide a large share of pediatric services to impoverished and minority children across the U.S.,
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