Weep for the poor children and the Democrats' lies about their health insurance
Fred Stone
q=MDAzYjY5OWVkMmQxZTJmNTZlNDNjZTlhOGU3NjNlZDA=
Brother, can you spare a CHIP? [Mark Steyn]
This would seem to be a fairly typical media trajectory. The Democrats
sign up a sick kid to read their Saturday morning radio address. As Paul
Krugman has observed, Bill Kristol, Rush Limbaugh and the rest of us
heartless bastards on the right were no doubt too busy laughing to pay
attention. But the respectable media were very taken by it:
President Bush, are you smarter than a seventh-grader?
Apparently not. Graeme Frost of Baltimore is 12 years old, a
seventh-grader at the Park School, and he understands why children need
health care and their parents need help paying for it. He explained it
during a rebuttal to the president's Saturday radio address. Yes, we
know, Senate staffers wrote the speech for Graeme. That doesn't take
away from the message. Does anyone really think President Bush writes
his own material?
Of course not. And nor does The Baltimore Sun, which did a nice fluffy
soft-focus story typing out the Dems' press release and not querying a
word:
Bonnie Frost works for a medical publishing firm; her husband,
Halsey, is a woodworker. They are raising their four children on
combined income of about $45,000 a year. Neither gets health insurance
through work.
If it ever occurred to Matthew Hay Brown, the Sun's "reporter", to look
into just what kind of "woodworking" Mr Frost did, he managed to
suppress the urge.
"icwhatudo" at Free Republic, however, showed rather more curiosity than
the professional reporter paid to investigate the story and did a bit of
Googling. Mr Frost, the "woodworker", owns his own design company and
the commercial property it operates from, part of which space he also
rents out; they have a 3,000-sq-ft home on a street where a 2,000-sq-ft
home recently sold for half a million dollars; he was able to afford to
send two children simultaneously to a $20,000-a-year private school; his
father and grandfather were successful New York designers and
architects; etc. This is apparently the new definition of "working
families":
Had it not been for a federal health insurance program tailored for
working families such as hers - ones lacking the income to purchase
private health insurance - Frost is certain that she and her husband
would be buried under a mound of unpaid medical bills... She and her
husband have priced private health insurance, but they say it would cost
them more per month than their mortgage - about $1,200 a month. Neither
parent has health insurance through work.
Insureblog, also demonstrating more journalistic initiative than Mr Hay
Brown, checked out that last bit:
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?
But who needs facts when you've got the human-interest angle sewn up?
Bonnie Frost still can't drive down the road where the accident
occurred...
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.
--
Fred Stone
aa# 1369
“The hypocrisy argument is a tactic used by thought fascists who believe
an immutable personal characteristic must dictate – without exception –
the ideological and political state of a person’s mind.”
ike milligan
"Fred Stone" <fsto...@earthling.com> wrote in message
news:Xns99C2B766CB...@216.151.153.44...
> http://corner.nationalreview.com/post/?
> q=MDAzYjY5OWVkMmQxZTJmNTZlNDNjZTlhOGU3NjNlZDA=
>
> Brother, can you spare a CHIP? [Mark Steyn]
>
> This would seem to be a fairly typical media trajectory. The Democrats
> sign up a sick kid to read their Saturday morning radio address. As Paul
> Krugman has observed, Bill Kristol, Rush Limbaugh and the rest of us
> heartless bastards on the right were no doubt too busy laughing to pay
> attention. But the respectable media were very taken by it:
>
We had health insurance under SCHIP for our son. Now we are over the limit
of income for the program We don't have health insurance ourselves. Now we
make $60,000 a year and none of us can afford health insurance and pay the
mortgage, utilities and food. We have to stay healthy. Can't afford to go to
a doctor for checkups because the insurance industry has made the cost of
private medical care unaffordable without insurance. When you elitists (who
have insurance) complain about the government helping people to get medical
care, you appear ridiculous.
My stepfather was a country doctor in the 1950's and 60's. He made house
calls. When people didn't have the money to pay him, they paid with
vegetables. Now doctors can't dpo that any more, because the insurance
industry and the pharmaceutical industry have inflated the cost of health
care. The medical-industrial complex has made turning back to private health
care impossible. the only way forward now is to single-payer system, what
you would term "socialized medicine". Universal health care would save the
government money, but the Pharmaceutical companies and the health-insurance
companies don't want that to happen, as it would eat into their profits. Go
figure. The government and corporations save money, control costs and the
whole process, and there is less money for the industry to steal.
Fred Stone
news:13gj308...@corp.supernews.com:
>
> "Fred Stone" <fsto...@earthling.com> wrote in message
> news:Xns99C2B766CB...@216.151.153.44...
>> http://corner.nationalreview.com/post/?
>> q=MDAzYjY5OWVkMmQxZTJmNTZlNDNjZTlhOGU3NjNlZDA=
>>
>> Brother, can you spare a CHIP? [Mark Steyn]
>>
>> This would seem to be a fairly typical media trajectory. The
>> Democrats sign up a sick kid to read their Saturday morning radio
>> address. As Paul Krugman has observed, Bill Kristol, Rush Limbaugh
>> and the rest of us heartless bastards on the right were no doubt too
>> busy laughing to pay attention. But the respectable media were very
>> taken by it:
>>
>
> We had health insurance under SCHIP for our son. Now we are over the
> limit of income for the program We don't have health insurance
> ourselves. Now we make $60,000 a year and none of us can afford health
> insurance and pay the mortgage, utilities and food. We have to stay
> healthy. Can't afford to go to a doctor for checkups because the
> insurance industry has made the cost of private medical care
> unaffordable without insurance. When you elitists (who have insurance)
> complain about the government helping people to get medical care, you
> appear ridiculous. My stepfather was a country doctor in the 1950's
> and 60's. He made house calls. When people didn't have the money to
> pay him, they paid with vegetables. Now doctors can't dpo that any
> more, because the insurance industry and the pharmaceutical industry
> have inflated the cost of health care.
No, the Democrats did that.
> The medical-industrial complex
> has made turning back to private health care impossible. the only way
> forward now is to single-payer system, what you would term "socialized
> medicine".
That's not the "medical-industrial complex" doing that, that's your
favorite Democrat politicians doing that.
> Universal health care would save the government money, but
> the Pharmaceutical companies and the health-insurance companies don't
> want that to happen, as it would eat into their profits.
Their profits would be guaranteed by regulation. Just like utility
company profits were guaranteed by regulation. No, "universal health
care" is just another power-grab by your greedy politicians.
> Go figure.
> The government and corporations save money, control costs and the
> whole process, and there is less money for the industry to steal.
>
Industry doesn't steal money. Government does. That's your first mistake
right there.