The figures I have seen on this bill allocate 35 billion dollars to provide health care insurance for 4 million children from families with income under 42,000 per year.

What I have not been able to find out is how many years of insurance that would provide.....

At over 8750 dollars per child.... I hope it is designed to provide insurance premiums for a number of years....

My children are grown, but we paid insurance payments on each of them for 22 years. Good insurance on a child costs about $70 a month... less if you get a family plan... or look at different levels of deductibles, care plans, and choice of physicians. When our children needed care not covered by their insurance my husband and I worked longer, worked harder, worked extra jobs, and made due with less to pay for it. It was not easy, but it was one of the responsibilities on assumes when one makes the choice to become a parent.

I want every child to receive adequate medical care... but my tax dollars will be paying for this program.. and I want to know that it is handled with fiscal responsibility and that the parents are doing their fair share to assume the responsibility that is theirs for their children.

I already pay taxes to supply medical and dental care for persons who can not afford to pay for their own care, through various county, state, and federal programs.

My husband and I pay for our own private insurance with contributions from his employer to help with the expense. Every month I have to budget carefully to pay my co-pay for my doctor visits and for my medications... and should one of us be hospitalized... we would be paying off the hospital bills for many years.

No person is turned away from our county health care system... but they are expected to establish a payment plan and to pay their bill over time.

The county system is not convenient... it is crowded and the lines are long. It is not easy... but life is not easy.. being a parent is not easy..

There are excellent hospital facilities, clinics for immunization, preventive care clinics and clinics for sick children. These are provided by our tax dollars... the tax dollars that we pay now.

Before I spend additional tax dollars on another health program for children... I would like more information on what the needs of these children are and why they are not being met by the system that is already in place. Why are these children not getting the care they need? Perhaps there would be a less expensive alternative that involved modifications to the present system to make it more convenient, so that parents would avail themselves of the current services.

I have watched the Food Commodities Program which provided an assortment of good, wholesome, well balanced foodstuffs to people in need on a monthly basis degenerate into the food stamp program and then the credit card system where qualified recipients get a credit card to use at the grocery store and buy any kind of junk food they want with it. I see it all the time at the checkout counter... when my tax dollars are paying for food that has no nutritional value and is more expensive than what I can afford to feed my family.

I would not like to see the same degradation of quality of service to occur with health care for children.