Posted on 10/09/2007 5:21:39 AM PDT by radar101
ABC News' Rick Klein Reports: With debate raging in Washington over children's health insurance, congressional Democrats found a new way to make their case for an expansion last weekend: Rather than have a senator or a congressman respond to President Bush's weekly radio address, they decided to have a child who was helped by the program speak directly to the public.
But the 12-year-old boy whom Democrats chose as their poster child is now at the center of a firestorm in Washington and beyond. Conservative bloggers who uncovered some details of the family's finances are blasting the family, calling the fact that they rely on federal insurance an example of how the State Children's Health Insurance Program has expanded beyond its original intent.
According to Senate Democratic aides, some bloggers have made repeated phone calls to the home of 12-year-old Graeme Frost, demanding information about his family's private life. On Monday, a spokesman for Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid accused GOP leadership aides of "pushing falsehood" in an effort to distract from the political battle over S-CHIP.
"This is a perverse distraction from the issue at hand," said Jim Manley, a spokesman for Reid, D-Nev. "Instead of debating the merits of providing health care to children, some in GOP leadership and their right-wing friends would rather attack a 12-year-old boy and his sister who were in a horrific car accident."
Manley cited an e-mail sent to reporters by a Senate Republican leadership aide, summing up recent blog traffic about the boy's family. A spokesman for Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., declined to comment on Manley's charge that GOP aides were complicit in spreading disparaging information about Frosts.
In making the case for a proposed expansion of the S-CHIP program, Democrats found a boy who seemed like an ideal poster child in Graeme Frost, a Baltimore native whose family does not have private health insurance.
When Graeme and his sister were seriously injured in a 2004 car crash, their parents relied on S-CHIP coverage to help them recover. After House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's office became aware of the Frosts through a healthcare interest group, FamiliesUSA, Democratic leaders turned to Graeme to deliver the party's weekly radio address Sept. 29.
"If it weren't for CHIP, I might not be here today," Frost said in the address, which was written by Senate Democratic aides. "We got the help we needed because we had health insurance for us through the CHIP program. But there are millions of kids out there who don't have CHIP, and they wouldn't get the care that my sister and I did if they got hurt."
But after a largely positive story about Frost appeared in the Baltimore Sun, conservative-leaning bloggers began focusing on details of Frost's family situation. They suggested the family makes the conservative argument -- that the children's health insurance program has strayed from its original purpose by subsidizing healthcare for middle-class families, not just poor children.
A blogger on FreeRepublic.com discovered that Frost and his sister, Gemma, attend a private school where tuition costs $20,000 a year. Their father, Halsey, is a self-employed woodworker, meaning that if his family doesn’t have health insurance, it’s because Halsey Frost -- as his own boss -- chooses not to purchase it for himself.
"One has to wonder that if time and money can be found to remodel a home, send kids to exclusive private schools, purchase commercial property and run your own business . . . maybe money can be found for other things," a blogger with the handle "icwhatudo" wrote on FreeRepublic.
That posting was widely circulated in the blogosphere, making great fodder for conservatives who argue that President Bush was right to veto the Democrats’ bill expanding S-CHIP.
"People make choices and it's clear the Frosts have made choice to invest in property and a business, but not in private health insurance," Mark Tapscott, editorial page editor of The Washington Examiner, wrote on his blog.
But Manley say conservative bloggers didn't dig deep enough. It turns out that the Frost children attend Baltimore’s Park School on near-full scholarships; they pay roughly $500 per child per year in tuition, he said.
Like many small-business owners, Halsey Frost can't even afford to provide health insurance to himself, Manley said.
"Last year, the Frost's made $45,000 combined," Manley said. "Over the past few years they have made no more than $50,000 combined depending on Halsey's ability to find work."
The Frost family did not immediately return calls seeking comment.
Not as far as I can throw one of Hillary’s legs.
I am. This father is failing his children. Making sure your children stay healthy and can be treated when injured or sick is just as important as buying food for them.
IF YOU CHOOSE A JOB THAT DOES NOT ALLOW YOU TO DO SO, that is your responsibility, not mine.
If the father files as a Sub-S corp., he can pay himself a minimal salary, say around 45,000/yr., and take Sub-S distributions on top of that. He could be making a ton of money.
Just sayin’.
I wonder how liberally they write off "business expenses"....
Actually it's more like the dimms have "Kerryed" a 12 year old.
This illustrates the pitfall of most government handout programs. There is no distinction between handouts to people who cannot take care of essentials themselves under any circumstances and those who can take care of essentials themselves, but choose not to.
With those real estate holdings, this family wouldn’t get any kind of government assistance with college tuition.
The kids must have been in the top 5% of their Kindygarden class.
It would also be interesting to know what the cash side of the woodworking business looks like. My barber of 20 plus years has two tills, one in front for looks and his back pocket for cash customers.......
In point of fact, they are not attacking Graeme and Gemma Frost, but the bottom-feeding scum who manipulated these children into lying on national TV.
I’ll be damned. Where did you find that?
Read it again; the kids are on scholarship.
But that is not, and never was, the point.
The original post never accused them of any financial shenanigans. The question is why do they feel deserving of federal aid when they have such resources on their own?
NY Times marriage announcements.
Speak for yourself. I am perfectly willing to "blast the family" in this case, if the various bits of information that has been presented by the Democrats and researched here on FreeRepublic are true. For one thing, there's a good chance the family has been engaging in some serious tax fraud. And if not, then they have been clearly gaming the system in order to have their childrens' medical bills paid by taxpayers who are far less well-off than they are.
If true, why go through all that trouble to send their kids to this school? Perhaps because the gub'mint schools are a disaster? ... that very same gub'mint that the left really wants to control your/our health care?
It’s in the article. The kids get scholarships and the parents pay $500 per child. The non-scholarship tuition is $20K.
I don’t know if this is the case here, but many public schools outsource special needs kids to more specialized schools, the school district pays most of the tuition. There are lots of very expensive schools where most of the kids ways are paid by tax dollars.
I think the key with this story is for us to point out that the original, unexpanded SCHIP saved these kids lives and is paying for their recovery. Bush merely vetoed the expansion, but clearly the original program works, thank God, or these kids would be in deep water and the family destitute.
Don’t go after the kids, the family, or their situation.
While we can use propaganda to make it look like this working family is wealthy, they may not be at all. The dad is a cabinetmaker, so seeing them in a kitchen with nice cabinets (their kitchen is bigger and better fitted out than mine fer shur) does not mean $$$, it probably means lots of weekend work at his own shop.
OK, I didn't read the full story.
“Writing off” health insurance doed NOT make it free. You still have to pay for it although he may be using pre-tax dollars. As a one person SCorp, I cannot even provide health insurance through my company. Officers of corporations do not qualify for company paid health care. I have to purchase it for me and my family myself.
I’ve posted this before, I’ll say it again.
In NJ, over 10% of the participants in SCHIP are committing fraud. Exactly as this kid’s father is doing. You have illegal immirgants working cash only zero declared income zero income tax paid careers and their native born citizen children. The parents sign the kid up for SCHIP while every year in NJ, there are over 4,000 children by May 2nd who can’t get into the SCHIP program because the yearly quota has been reached. Every single one of those slots needed by truly qualifying children is being taken by scam artists who not only are sucking at the government teet, they also are committing tax evasion felonies on almost 100% of the household income.
Everyone in the state involved with the program knows it, the state FamilyCare administrators know it, they have internal reports done to estimate the levels of fraud, BUT because NJ was receiving unsupervised funding from Washington DC due to the waivers signed by Bush, it was and is in the interests of NJ Family Care administrators, bureaucrats, and politicians to milk the program for all it’s worth.
The audacity of Corzine to grandstand and attempt to “sue” the Federal government over this schould be enough I hope, for the GOA to audit the NJ FamilyCare books, and bring an end to this fleecing of the nation’s treasury.
Wouldn't you be shocked if we could play Six Degrees of Hitlery Clinton with this????????
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.