Congress has a vital opportunity to override the president's veto of legislation reauthorizing and expanding the federal State Children's Health Insurance Program. They hold in their hands the health-care fate of millions of American children.

The goal of SCHIP is to ensure that children receive the health care they need. The program was created through bipartisan legislation 10 years ago and provides affordable health-care coverage to children whose families need assistance to be able to purchase insurance.

Nearly everyone has been impacted by the rapidly increasing costs of health insurance. For the past five years, health insurance premiums have increased at four times the rate of inflation and wage growth. For many working families, this has priced family health insurance out of their reach.

Many people receive health insurance through their employer and might not realize how much it costs these days. In Colorado in 2006, an average family plan purchased through an employer group policy cost approximately $12,000-$14,000 per year. Employers are not required to provide insurance, and in Colorado, about 46 percent of private employers do not. The majority of uninsured adults are working, and the majority of those are working full-time, year-round. When insurance is offered, it is often for the employee only, leaving the cost of family coverage to the employee.

SCHIP is a program that is a lifesaver for many families. Consider one single mom with two children who earns what we consider to be a decent wage of $35,000 per year, an amount roughly 200 percent of the federal poverty level. While her employer pays for her insurance, purchasing coverage for her children costs $9,000 per year - more than a quarter of her income. And remember, the cost of insurance is not the total cost of health care: When someone gets sick, there are also deductibles, copays and coinsurance (paying, for example, 10 percent or 20 percent of the bill). Increasingly, the cost of health care is beyond the reach of more families, making this now a problem of the middle class. Half the increase in uninsured children last year occurred in middle-income families (200 percent-400 percent of federal poverty level, or FPL).

A study in Colorado comparing basic living expenses with health-care costs showed that families do not begin to be able to afford the full cost of their own health care until their income reaches 250 percent of FPL, and often require some level of help up to, or even more than, 300 percent of FPL. The proposed legislation allows states flexibility in setting eligible income levels but includes checks that discourage overly generous standards. In Colorado, SCHIP is available only to children of families with incomes up to 205 percent of FPL, despite our knowledge that those between 200 percent and 300 percent often need assistance.

Some have wondered whether parents might move their children from private insurance to SCHIP. While some of that may occur, in most cases the issue is that private insurance was costing more than the family could afford.

In Colorado there are approximately 176,000 uninsured children whose health is more at risk than their insured friends. Research has consistently demonstrated that children without health insurance are more likely to go without needed care and experience worse health outcomes than insured children.

According to the Congressional Budget Office, this legislation would expand coverage to 4 million uninsured children, reducing the number of uninsured children by almost half.

In a perfect world, all parents would be able to afford quality health insurance. But the way things stand now, they simply can't. Every one of those 176,000 children deserves health-care coverage.