President George W. Bush's congressional opponents failed to override his veto of a bill expanding the State Children's Health Insurance Program, and now the face-off starts again.

After the Oct. 18 override vote failed, U.S. House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-San Francisco) declared that the president would face a similar bill in early November. Just like the vetoed SCHIP bill, the new legislation will include an expansion covering 10 million children, she said. She did not discuss other possible changes to the bill.

According to an Oct. 17 Los Angeles Times account, several congressional Democrats are considering sending the same bill to the president repeatedly, hoping to force politically unpopular votes. Looking to avoid that possibility, bill proponent Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) said he would immediately seek negotiations on a new bill with the administration, the Times said.

The California Medical Association, a longtime SCHIP proponent, condemned Bush's veto. "President Bush, while overseeing an annual budget of trillions of dollars for this country, has astonished us by denying the poor children of this country the $12 billion a year it would take to cover needed healthcare services," said CMA Immediate Past President Anmol Mahal, MD, in a statement.

SCHIP covers about 6 million U.S. and 800,000 California children of low-income families. The expansion would have covered about 4 million more low-income children, but would also have covered some kids from middle-income families, an unacceptable outcome to opponents balking at its five-year price tag of $60 billion. The bill originally passed the House 265 to 159, with 45 Republicans voting in favor.