Posted on 10/11/2007 6:04:41 AM PDT by kristinn
Since then, Frost and his family have been introduced first-hand to something else that most kids his age haven't: the reality of how brutal partisan politics can be in the Internet age. It started over the weekend, when a blogger calling himself Icwhatudo put up a post on the conservative website Freerepublic.com noting what he had found by scavenging around the internet: that Graeme attends a private school, lives in a remodeled house near one that had sold for $485,000 in March and is the child of parents whose wedding was announced in the New York Times. The post also noted that his father purchased a $160,000 commercial space in 1999.
SNIP
And while they are still uninsured, they claim it is most certainly not by choice. Bonnie Frost says the last time she priced health coverage, she learned it would cost them $1,200 a month.
In short, just as the radio spot claimed, the Frosts are precisely the kind of people that the SCHIP program was intended to help.
SNIP
While the family continues to support the vetoed bill that would expand the program to 4 million more children, they are hoping to remove themselves from the middle of the storm. After giving a few interviews, Halsey and Bonnie Frost now say they don't want to say anything more, though network camera crews have planted themselves in front of their house.
SNIP
Politics has never been a gentle game. As far back as 1895, satirist Finley Peter Dunne's fictional saloonkeeper Martin Dooley observed that women, children and prohibitionists would do well to stay out of it, because "politics ain't beanbag." But surely, even Mr. Dooley could never have imagined a day would come when a mere seventh grader could be swift-boated.
(Excerpt) Read more at time.com ...
“Amen...however WHAT Network Cameras???? Certainly haven’t seen one
story about this, have you?”
The only thing I’ve read about it is here at FR (and now the excerpt
from Time Mag).
If the Frost house is ringed by Network MSM camera crews...
it’s because they are vying to be the first to catch the Frosts
when they come out of the house and read a piece of propaganda
(crafted by Hillary!’s staff) that will totally blur the issues.
And make the Republicans and anyone daring to investigate and expose
these frauds look like the bad guys.
That's for after-accident insurance. I.e., when the two kids who still need rehab services now have "pre-existing" conditions.
It's very misleading. The whole point of FReepers' research is to point out that the Frosts could've bought much cheaper insurance before the accident.
Know what else is misleading? Karen Tumulty --and all the other DBM reporters-- cite the tax's assessor's number as the "value" of the Frost's house, in an obvious attempt to minimize it.
Reporters know (or should know) that tax assessment does NOT equal "value," especially market value.
I use my equity to pay many expenses. College tuition for my son, home repair and improvement and any unexpected large expenditures as required.
My excess income is sunk into high yielding investments.
If you can pay your unexpected immediate bills with equity financing and not have to dip into your high yield equity (i.e. stocks) that can pay dividends as well as appreciate in value, you have a situation where you can finance your short term needs from dividends, interest income and capital gains.
It takes smarts and discipline. Which is apparently in short supply to the Frosts.
The Frosts are gaming the system.
Of course, they could also purchased coverage from the state. SOme of this is through the same SCHIP program, but if you check out MCHP Premium you can see that a family of 4 with an income (probably taxable, not gross) of $61,950, with 4 children, can enroll for only $57 a month for the MHCP program. Under certain levels of income, the fee is waived.
Of course, they qualified for MHCP it appears, without paying a premium. They could have had this insurance before the accident, it's comprehensive and covers doctors visits, well-care, and other things.
Virginia has a program for child health care as well.Family Access to Medical Insurance Security
I also ran a rate quote with Blue Cross, just including children, and if you went with a $2250 deductable, it was only 187 a month for two children. It's the adults that probably drove up the cost.
That’s a fine strategy, but it wouldn’t work to pay for a monthly medical insurance premium.
And it wouldn’t have worked to pay the actual medical bills, which apparently were over a million dollars.
Someone else? Do you have any evidence that the GP's gave a donation?
Looking for the thread still. Who do you think paid the $40,000 a year?
Well, perhaps the blame for that might be placed at the feet of the Senate Democrat staffers who found these folks, wrote Graeme's little speech for him, and rehearsed him at it until he had it juuuuuuussst right.
The author's real bitch is that the Democrats used a 12-year old kid to do their bidding, but that the expected free pass didn't materialize.
Tough luck for the Frost family -- but blame the cynical Democrats who put young Master Frost in the spotlight in the first place.
The pro-abort non-mothers aren’t trotting their aborted children out there just at the Nazis never held up pictures of dead Jews to defend their actions.
What’s your point?
You can get a medical rider on your vehicle insurance to accident related injuries.
It is very cheap.
It is the same kind of difference between comprehensive life insurance and accidental death. There is a huge price difference!
Information has come to light that the school provides financial assistance to a large percentage of its students, ranging from $1,000 to full scholarship.
The tuition at this school appears to be similar to the tuition at most major universities: the sticker price only paid by the very well off.
sitetest
But OK.
"Maybe Dad should drop his woodworking hobby and get a real job that offers health insurance rather than making people like me (also with 4 kids in a 600sf smaller house and tuition $16,000 less per kid and no commercial property ownership) pay for it in my taxes."
That may be a legitimate attack, but it certainly was an attack. But maybe you just didn't think about that aspect of "attack", so here's this one:
"Let 'em twist in the wind and be eaten by ravens," wrote one one on Redstate.com, who was quoted in the Baltimore Sun. "Then maybe the bunch of socialist patsies will think twice."
Not here, but I specifically said "NOT HERE". But since we are here, here's comments from this very thread that are attacks on members of the family:
How admirable. Maybe instead of pimping your son out to socialists, you could sign your name to a check to cover his needs in life.
Mr. Frost. Stand on your own feet like a man and stop whining.
Deadbeat dads can go to jail for being deadbeat dads, but what about deadbeat parents?? If they work that hard, they can afford health insurance for their son.
Oh, but maybe you took it personally, like I was saying that YOU attacked the parents. I wasn't, but since we bring it up:
Methinks that the Frost Grandparents and the Frost parents are doing a little TAX EVASION!!! HELLO IRS!!!
Now, you may consider every one of those a "fair attack", but they ARE attacks on the family. My point was that ANY attack on the specific family was unnecessary and distracted from the issue. Frankly, it plays into the Democrat's hands, and validates their use of the personal to make their point.
I hope that this satisfies your curiosity as to what I meant when I said "attacks on the family".
Now, if you could point me to an article somewhere that says the granparents donated $40,000 to the school, I'd appreciate it.
One thing I haven’t seen mentioned in all this, is that “catastrophic coverage” plans with high deductibles are pretty reasonable. We have one on our college-age son, and it’s only $60 a month, and I think it gives $1 million in coverage. Even if they truly couldn’t have afforded conventional coverage (which is certainly questionable), the could have afforded a catastophic coverage plan.
You Specifically said there were Attacks on the KID.....there wasn’t....apology is in order to all freepers. Hope you are a big enough man to do so.
Well that raises an interesting question, doesn’t it? Why would a private school, supposedly profit motivated, give away its services for free? So the obvious question is whether the scholarships are actually being paid for by private funding or whether the school just isn’t collecting tuition from some of its students. I’d suspect it’s the former, and that leads to a question of where, exactly, that private funding for scholarships is coming from. It’d be kind of interesting if it’s coming from something like the Heinz family funds.
“Please- isn’t there a Freeper who works for the IRS?????”
Where’s my old “Nixon Now” button? He’d already have a three-inch thick file on them by now!
And that was the only thing icwhatudo got wrong.
Have you bothered reading the shifting explanations for how, exactly, the Frosts DO manage to send their children to pricey private schools (which the children also attended before the accident, when the family allegedly "couldn't afford" health insurance)?
- Jim Manley, flak for Harry Reid, insists the children get "almost full scholarships"
- Mr. Reilly, Halsey Frost's commercial tenant (who has known the Frosts for 10 years) says it was his understanding that Frost's wealthy parents paid the tuition
- Now, according to Matthew Hay Brown in yesterday's Baltimore Sun, the story is that "The four Frost children depend on financial aid to attend private school."
Reporter Matthew Hay Brown doesn't bother to inform us
1. how much "financial aid" was provided
2. who provided it
3. whether the "financial aid" is/was a loan or a grant.
His sister Gemma, also severely injured in the accident, attended the same school prior to the accident meaning the family was able to come up with nearly $40,000 per year for tuition for these 2 grade schoolers. Confirmation both attended Park found here using edit-"find on this page"-Gemma. It will take you to an article in the schools newspaper about a fundraiser for Gemma class of 16, and Graeme class of 13.
And you are correct, we don't know that "the family" was able to come up the "$40,000" tuition.
Also, in a later article Mr. Frost was SAID to have said he had FOUR children in private school, not just these two. But again, we don't know what the tuition they are being charged is, how much they pay, whether someone else pays part, or what.
It was a question that should have been asked by the reporter, but wasn't.
And I do agree with you that we should not state as fact anything but that which is substantiated by records or by a news report from a credible news outlet. That still could end up being wrong, because news outlets get things wrong, but it would be easier to defend if it was someone else's mistake.
I thought the original did a good job of that, I missed the 2nd reference to the payments for the school.
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