When we fail the next generation, what is left?  Children’s care is the symbolic canary in the coal mine.  If we let our children suffer, then what does that say about the future health of the U.S., both literally and symbolically?  The University of Rochester just released the following dismaying report on the state of children’s care in the U.S. (bold mine):

Uninsured kids in middle class have same unmet needs as poor
Large percentage of children with no health insurance go without care all year
Nationwide, uninsured children in families earning between $38,000 and $77,000 a year are just as likely to go without any health care as uninsured children in poorer families. More than 40 percent of children in those income brackets who are uninsured all year see no physicians and have no prescriptions all year, according to new research from the University of Rochester Medical Center.

“There’s an assumption that children in families with higher income levels don’t need insurance, that they are uninsured but are somehow still receiving health care anyway,” said Laura Shone, Dr.P.H., M.S.W., an assistant professor of pediatrics at the University of Rochester Medical Center and author of the study being presented today at the Pediatric Academic Societies meeting in Honolulu, Hawaii. “This study shows that in reality, a large percentage of these children don’t receive any care at all – which pediatricians say is unacceptable, and parents know is unrealistic. Even healthy, older children need to see their physicians at least once over the course of a year.”

Overall, almost 3 million uninsured children had no medical care and no prescription use for a full year, according to an analysis of nationally representative data from the 2004 Medical Expenditure Panel Survey. Of those, about 1.6 million children may qualify for public coverage but are not enrolled, and about 1 million more could be covered through expansions that were proposed yet vetoed at the national level in late 2007.

This crisis, this baffling failure of our leaders to guard the health of our children while we wage civil war in Iraq, highlights the reason we need change in Washington.  If this doesn’t help you get your progressive freak on, I don’t know what will.  Read the entire press release here.