Booster Shot for Children : House version of immunization program deserves to be passed

As the House-Senate Conference Committee on the Budget meets this week, it will be struggling with several big-ticket items, including the proposed energy tax. But less politically glamorous issues in the budget--such as childhood immunization-- must not be forgotten.

When President Clinton announced in April that he wanted a childhood immunization program to receive a high priority in his Administration, he was on to something. Preventive medicine has been proven, time and again, to save taxpayer dollars. A child who receives the appropriate inoculations against measles is a child who doesn’t become ill or perhaps even die from that disease. A 1984 study found that every dollar spend on the Childhood Immunization Program saved the government an estimated $10 in medical costs, according to the National Commission on Children. Yet in 1990, 26,000 cases of measles were reported, a huge increase over the average of about 3,000 a year from 1981 to 1988.

While comprehensive national health care reform may eventually include an immunization program, there’s no need for American children to wait. Unlike overhauling the health care system, the issue is not complicated. Everyone knows immunization works, and there’s no reason it can’t be made available to every needy and uninsured child in the United States. Now.

The version of the bill passed by the House would provide immunizations for 11.1 million children, including 4.6 million additional children, according to the Children’s Defense Fund. The House version includes a compromise worked out by Reps. Henry A. Waxman (D-Los Angeles) and John D. Dingell (D-Mich.). Under that compromise, the government would have to work with vaccine manufacturers and both poor and uninsured children would have access to free vaccinations.

Further changes may be necessary to ensure that children whose families can afford vaccinations--but whose medical insurance do not pay for vaccinations--don’t get subsidized.

Even so, the House version essentially has it right. The nation must not delay in protecting its children from preventable deadly diseases.