Monday, October 8, 2007

SCHIP Boy a Fraud?

It certainly appears so. Two Saturdays ago, the Democrats recruited one Graeme Frost to deliver their Saturday response to Bush's address regarding SCHIP

My parents work really hard and always make sure my sister and I have
everything we need, but the hospital bills were huge. We got the help we needed
because we had health insurance forus 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. Their parents
might have to sell their cars or their houses, or...

The insinuation was that his parents worked hard but they couldn't afford to buy private health insurance and without SCHIP he would have died. Is this really the case though? It is not according to financial records.

According to the financial records, the father owned a business, including the
building that made up the business. There was also another business housed on
the same property which almost certainly means he was receiving rent from the
other business. Furthermore, both children in the family went to private school.
Finally, the family lived in a home valued at almost $500 thousand.

There is more. The Baltimore Sun wrote a fluff piece and among other things, it said this

Having priced private insurance that would cost more than their mortgage - about
$1,200 a month - they continue to rely on the government program. In Maryland,
families that earn less than 300 percent of the federal poverty level - about
$60,000 for a family of four - are eligible.

Too bad, this is not true either. The folks at insure blog ran the numbers and they found this

A check of a quote engine for zip code 21250 (Baltimore) finds a plan for $641
with a $0 deductible and $20 doc copays.Adding a deductible of $750 (does not
apply to doc visits) drops the premium to $452. That's almost a third of the
price quoted in the article. Doesn't anyone bother to check the facts?Apparently
not.

So, it turns out their premiums were half that of what was claimed in the piece. Let's leave that aside. You can all see the rub here. This boy and his family were presented as hard working citizens who simply couldn't afford the huge costs of health care. They needed the government assistance, and only because of it, did their son survive a terrible car accident. Now, the President wants to veto the very program that helped save this poor boy.

Except that isn't reality. The boy's father ran and owned a business. He owned the property the business was on. He owned his own home and paid a fairly large mortgage for it. He even received rental income. Does this sound like the sort of person that the government should be subsidizing the health insurance of? Not to me. Yet, the Democrats want to expand this program even though it clearly already serves people it doesn't need to serve like the Frosts.

The Democrats tug on our emotions by parading little children who survived terrible accidents to plead with the public to provide a social program that they claim will only serve those that can't serve themselves. Too bad that isn't the truth. Since the media is in cohoots with them, too bad most of the public will never know the truth of the case of Graeme Frost.

His family has perpetuated a fraud on the public. It is a fraud that is meant to sell a bloated, unnecessary, and of course ultimately corrupt government program, as a program necessary for our compassionate country. What would the poll numbers be if the public knew the truth about the Frost family?

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Bingo -- the dirty little secret (not so secret) is that human nature is what it is -- people will not pay for something when they do not have to. It is high time to cut the smoke and mirrors -- let us have an honest, open debate about whether we as a people want to craft and live in a european style social democracy or the federal republic our founders crafted. We have the benefit of seeing the failures in europe and improving on their socialist ideas, but if we continue down the path we are on, we risk repeating their failures; that said, perhaps we can muster the courage of conviction to reinvigorate our federal republic and restore the concept of personal responsibility that won two world wars are resulted in the only stable superpower in the world.

mike volpe said...

The only way we are going to have that is if Conservatives fight back. If they don't let things like this get demonized and they strike back with what these sorts of programs lead to. It is easy to appeal on the emotional level and say that we have to save the kids, but saving every single child eventually leads to out of control corruption. Look at my stories about Emory.

Anonymous said...

Doesn't car insurance pay medical bills when you are in an accident? Or didn't they have car insurance either?

mike volpe said...

I don't think so. Car insurance covers the vehicle only.