Clinicians always inherit the results of bad social policy. Sooner or later, deleterious or ineffective policies will find clinical expression in patterns of illness, hospitalization, and ultimately death. History has shown that this cascade is never more intense than for children, a group exquisitely dependent on the adequacy of societal nurturance and protection. There is no question, therefore, that the current recession, the deepest since the Great Depression, will touch virtually all pediatric practices.