On September 29th, 12 year old Graeme Frost of Maryland got to do the Democrats’ radio address, in which he told his story of how he and his sister were seriously injured in a car accident, and if it hadn’t been for SCHIP, they wouldn’t be here today. So who is this 12 year old? The Baltimore Sun did a story on the family, in which it stated the family couldn’t get health insurance through their work. But the article left out quite a few important, and interesting, bits of information, which Freeper, icwhatudo, managed to find while googling:
First, Mr. Halsey Frost, Graeme’s father, owns his own woodworking design studio, Frostworks, so his claim that he can’t get health insurance through work is shockingly deceptive. He chooses not to get health care for his family. Second, Graeme and his sister Gemma attend the very exclusive Park School, which has a tuition of $20,000 a year, per child. Third, they live in a 3,000+ square foot home in a neighborhood with smaller homes that are selling for at least $400,000.
Yet, hardworking taxpayers who sacrifice many things such as expensive private schools and expensive houses in order to buy their own health care for their families are supposed to subsidize this family’s health insurance premiums.
Mark Steyn writing at The Corner makes this observation:
Bad things happen to good people, and they cause financial problems and tough choices. But, if this is the face of the “needy” in America, then no-one is not needy. And, if everyone needs assistance from the federal government, so be it. But I don’t think I want to drive down the road where Bonnie Frost wants to take us – because at the end of it there are no free-born citizens, just a nation where everyone is a ward of the state.
And what a sad state that would be, too.
Update: Bruce Kesler at The Democracy Project is also commenting on this story and notes that Maryland doesn’t have an asset test for SCHIP, which explains why the Frost family can climb onto the government dole.
Update II: Don Surber makes this great point:
This business of “affordable insurance” is socialistic. The Frosts found an “affordable” business building and an “affordable” 3,000-square foot house and an “affordable” private school. Why couldn’t these yuppies afford to cover their own damned kids?
Update III: The Shotgun:
In other words – taking into account the value of the home, the value of the father’s business, the value of the commercial property they own, and so forth minus their mortgage and whatever they might owe on the commercial property (and other sundry debts) an educated guess would suggest that this family has a net worth of somewhere in the neighbourhood of $500,000.
And they want the rest of the American people to foot their bill for their health care?
Update IV: Mark Tapscott at Tapscott’s Copy Desk writes of his experience as a journalist and notes the decline of healthy skepticism in journalism today:
When I first started working with and among journalists in the mid-1970s, there was still enough of the old school skepticism in the ranks that I quickly learned a good reporter always assumed there was more to a story than was being told by any one participant in it, which meant you had to keep digging and asking, digging and asking, to get all of the facts.
Put otherwise, you had to have a healthy skepticism about everything you were told by politicians, office-holders and public policy advocates across the entire political spectrum. But I see less and less of that kind of healthy skepticism among journalists when it comes to claims and conduct by Democrats and liberal activists.
Increasingly, getting the whole story about an issue in public policy these days starts with the Blogosphere because to a growing extent that is where you find educated skepticism and a willingness to dig for the facts.
Indeed.
Update V: Blue Crab Boulevard has a delicious satire piece about SCHIP.
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