The Baltimore Sun publishes some hard numbers:
The Frosts say the description of their family’s circumstances now circulating is misleading. Halsey, they say, is a self-employed woodworker – he has no employees – while Bonnie works part time for a medical publishing firm. Together, they say, they earn between $45,000 and $50,000 a year.
That would make the Frosts eligible for Maryland’s Children’s Health Program, which is open to families that earn no more than 300 percent of the federal poverty level, or $82,830 a year for a family of six.
The Frosts declined to show The Sun their 2006 income tax returns, and the state Department of Health and Mental Hygiene would not confirm their enrollment in the program. But John G. Folkemer, the deputy secretary for health care financing, said yesterday that applicants must prove their income levels through Social Security numbers or tax returns to be accepted for coverage.
Folkemer said a family’s assets are not considered in determining eligibility. Halsey Frost purchased the family home for $55,000 in 1990, according to city records, and refinanced in 2005, he says, to make improvements to accommodate the return of Graeme and Gemma from the hospital. The 1936 brick rowhouse, on a side street near Patterson Park, has an assessed value of $263,140.
So, up to 3 times the poverty level makes a family “working poor,” and they wish to expand the program.  I don’t have any beef with the family declining to share their tax filings; that’s their prerogative. I’d say more, but I expect it will all be covered in the comments. I wonder if I could get a distance learning degree in Mental Hygiene. What do mental hygienists get paid?
Nancy Pelosi, from the same article:
Pelosi fired back yesterday.
“I think that the attack on this family is just breaking new ground and stooping to new lows in terms of what happens in Washington, D.C.,” she told reporters.
Malkin has some examples of why we are a little distrustful regarding these issues. Perhaps you all can supply me some links to help Nan get a bit of perspective on how groundbreaking this is.
More insight: Loonbats believe Republican staffers may have spread smear info, because a staffer for McConnell wrote a summary of blog reactions to the news the family might not be so poor that somehow was misdirected to Harry Reid’s office.  You know, this leak may have severed his link.
Thoughts on karmic retribution and other good stuff, at the Pub, and Tinkerty-Tonk makes it sting again (but not me, this time). Maybe Malkin could outsource some of her stalking to Rachel.
Camille Paglia on lesbian bathroom sex and some other stuff I can’t recall. Lesbians are a lot like guys with breasts.
UPDATE: MayBee catches Adkins posting at Klein’s:
The cute part is how I was attacked… I said it on my blog and I’ll say it here. I wasn’t defending SCHIP, not at all, I was defending that families right to privacy. That’s why I put malkin’s real address, Phone number and Arial picture of her house on my blog. I removed it after a reporter for the Baltimore Sun asked me to kill it, because they were doing a story on Malkin.
If Malkin wants to try painting me as moonbat, fine. I’ll just paint her as the right wing fascist that she is.
Posted by: Hardliner | Oct 10, 2007 11:48:30 AM
Colin McEnroe boils down to this: It’s really cruel to expect people to plan ahead. What a noob.
Use extreme caution in rebuffing, taunting Chuck Adkins (h/t Moron Pundit)
It is once again obvious that the left is merely using ‘helping the poor’ as a first step toward outright socialism. How could any logical actor consider three times the poverty line poor enough to need government assistance. I certainly make nowhere near that much money and I don’t need any help.
It seems that this is all more about giving the government power while simultaneously punishing the successful and motivated.
Soon there will be so little incentive to really excell that people will be more likely to just accept the government’s help. This will, of course, allow the government to tell us what we can buy and where we can shop and what we can eat and how much we have to exercise and how often we need to see the doctor, etc…
Will the Republicans stand with the president to kill this major expansion of socialized medicine? Will they be smart enough to stop creeping absorption of our wonderful health care system into a socialist dictatorship, where bureacrats ration care as they do in Canada and Great Britain?
If the state of Maryland wishes to foot the bill for medical expenses for those up to 3x the poverty level, then that is completely up to the people of Maryland. Where I get concerned, like now, is when someone thinks that should be applied at the national level.
Let’s not forget recent proposals in Britain to deny National health care to smokers and the obese. Feel free to etch the irony into metal when drug addicts are afforded extensive state sponsored care. This is the reason some of us get a little hinky when Edwards suggests all will be required to have annual exams and Hillary opines that proof of insurance might be required for a job interview.
Yeesh, I need a break for a Salem and a Ring Ding. I’m still waiting for an explaination from anyone as to why I should trust a government run medical program when that same institution runs the VA and Medicare.
Anyone? Bueller?
Here’s my favorite line from the Boston Sun article:
But while the Frosts were helping a bipartisan majority in Congress sell a plan to expand the program
Wasn’t it the Democrat’s Radio address?
Anyway, I really have no problem with the idea of working people getting some subsidies from the US government. I have a huge problem with bringing a kid out to make the address, then crying that the kid is being attacked when people want to criticize the address or examine the one who gave it.
I also firmly believe the discussion of whether others (besides me) believe in the gov’t subsidizing working people needs to be had honestly, not in the guise of helping the “poor”. We all know that will lead to taxing the “rich”, and there will be about a $20,000/year income gap between the two groups.
Poor woman ain’t got no shoes. It’s gonna be a hard winter.
It’s over. The Deciders have spoken. We all hate the poor and wish the children to suffer. This is the story and this is how it will be pressed into homes across the country in newspapers and tv news(sic)programs from here until our side simply concedes.
Two college educated people are making a combined 45K a year? I made that alone as a Buck Sergeant with a GED and had full coverage for my family.
Mr Frost needs to man up and, if he is under 42 years of age, he can enlist. He will be making far more than he is now and his family will be covered. He could even go Air Force, which is the most civilianized of the services, to protect his liberal sensibilities somewhat.
If not, he needs to get motivated and take a job that will pay the bills, rather than playing at being an “artist” while his family goes without, and expecting the rest of us to pick up his slack..
It is utter defeats in public opinion like this one that lead me to believe the Republican Party will survive beyond 2016 as a viable political party.
The demographic-shifting legislation a completely Democrat dominated government could push through in 4 years would permanently shift our dominant politics to a socialist world view.
I just can’t imagine why someone would want our kids to live in a third-world, socialist country.
I think it’s pretty clear that she could at least afford to cover her non-brain-damaged children, herself, and intermittent work boy. Exclusions are there for a reason. But they choose to make everyone else responsible for their healthy, college-educated inability to provide for themselves.
Nice pumpkin.
I’m afraid that I agree with Moron Pundit, in that we’re looking at a runaway freight train towards socialized health care.
Three interesting outcomes that cheer me up, somewhat:
– I am cheered by the thought that these people will probably receive the same level of “care” my father received at the VA Hospital in Lyons, Illinois. Hope you all have children who will visit you regularly to make sure you don’t stew in your own waste while comatose, while the “nursing staff” is nowhere to be seen. Otherwise, good luck!
– This could lead to class conflict being turned on its head, with the middle class up in arms at paying for the sloth of the lower class (particularly beatniks like the Frost family) at the behest of the uberclass elites. This could lead to a really interesting form of populism.
– We will probably see the welfare state bankrupt itself sooner rather than later. I know I will not bust my ass to rise in my career to just see any increase in salary go to the state. Why should any other rational actor?
<hastily crosses legs>
The Pelosi’s are worth $25 million, conservatively. Nancy Patricia D’Alesandro Pelosi, herself, she is a non-smoker, so don’t cost her nothing to sprinkle money on these losers.
We all hate the poor, except by the evidence of the people that the program is supposed to help, we are all poor. And this means we hate ourselves, which just goes to prove that conservatives and classic liberals are insane and ought to be looked up so they can’ endanger themselves or anyone else.
Self-loathing conservatives? Hmmm.
I thought that we had outsourced all our loathing long ago.
Agreed, but this is precisley what the progressives seek to avoid – people taking charge of their own lives.
Make no mistake, the Frosts, while certainly beatnik, are decidely upper class. They come from wealth and prestige, and likely move in social circles far removed from the hoi polloi. They fully understand the game they are playing and are smug in the knowledge their nest will be fully feathered by family wealth (something those uber-elites scrupulously avoid looking into) thus the de-emphasis on obtaining suitable incomes of their own.
I make a fair bit more than the Frosts purport to, yet I could not begin to cover the expense (monthly payment, taxes, insurance, and maintenance) of purchasing a Suburban. How did they manage it on so much less? One wonders.
We cannot allow a self-loathing GAP!
Take back America’s jobs!
That, at least, is a job we KNOW Americans will do.
They’re just the Phony Poor!
Oops…
I just found this on Ezra Klein:
#5 MayBee
Anyway, I really have no problem with the idea of working people getting some subsidies from the US government. I have a huge problem with bringing a kid out to make the address, then crying that the kid is being attacked when people want to criticize the address or examine the one who gave it.
They chose this unfortunate child for that very reason: ANY criticism of any kind would be denounced as “beyond the pale”.
This whole gimmick by the Dems pisses me off to no end. The cost of insurance was something that they did not prioritize prior to the accident, and now everyone else is picking up the tab for them. Why not expand this to people that fall behind on their credit cards, or their mortgage payments? Why is a program for children being extended to adults?
I wonder what Jeff would have about all this.
I wonder what Jeff would have *thought* about all this, is what I meant.
As a parallel program, I propose that we round up all of the wild animals and put them in zoos…
…for their own protection!
For as we all know, zoo animals are protected from predation, they have actual medical care (which those poor, poor wild animals have never even imagined), and they’re guaranteed three square a day, or whatever it is they need.
What’s that? You object? Then you must HATE all of the cute fluffy little bunnies and ferretses and otterses and raccoonses and birdses and want them to die meaningless deaths in the wild! What about the noble wolf, bear, coyote, eagle, raven, hawk, condor, and cougar? Huh? I suppose you don’t care about them either.
Heartless bastages, all of you.
You just want them out of your garden, dicentra.
You forgot the turtleses.
Which brings me back to the new version of populism I can see developing. On my way home from the train, I walk through the “nice” part of the neighborhood, with homes that go for $600K-$800K, many with “Neighbors for Peace” or “I Stand with Cindy” signs in their front windows, and various Volvos and late-model luxury crossover vehicles in the driveway. I would be safe in saying that these bobos would be most inclined to socialize health care.
Then I cross the main thoroughfare to my neighborhood, where the cars aren’t as nice, there are no signs in the front window other than “We Call Police,” and most of my neighbors speak Spanish. And where most of us would take a major hit to our living standards with a serious tax hike.
So, yeah, I am becoming more and more disposed to punitive levels of taxation on my high-falutin’ neighbors on the “nice” part of the neighborhood. Hell, I want the fuckers to start paying for my car insurance, too.
Spiny Norman-
I agree.
I really, really hope whatever Dem staffer wrote the speech for Graeme also warned the family this would happen. I hate to think the Dems let the Frosts go into this naively.
Well, some of the absolutely most ardent supporters of SCHIP are human services workers. One of the reasons for SCHIPs being is that it is meant to help young adults coming out of foster care. Fresh 18 year olds who are no longer wards of the state. I’m not saying I agree, but I heard this argument just this morning. “These kids have been in foster care their whole life and nobody has taught them anything. So, now, once they are released they are expected to be able to pay for insurance (or get a full time job with benefits)?” And working in human services, I do empathize with that notion a little. However, to have the age cutoff at 25 is ridiculous as all hell. I would agree to an age cutoff of 21 and at the most 200% over the FPL. And the bottom line as it pertains to the Frosts, is that they are fuckups. Plain and simple. They failed themselves and their children.
Popular support for this program will bottom out as it becomes more widely known that the “needy” family the Democrats chose to make their case for expanding this giveaway program lives in a newly-remodeled 3,000 square foot home, owns and rents out commerical property, and sends their children to tony private schools – all while working part time.
People are smart enough to recognize the difference between “the working poor” and people who are “working the system.” And Americans hate welfare queens.
Exactly, Percy. Why stop at health insurance. Since auto insurance is currently an “unfunded mandate” why doesn’t the state pick up the tab for that? Homeowner’s coverage? Those evil mortgage companies require it. How abou the state help me out with that too? Business and professional insurance. Same thing.
Oh, the sweet sweet irony.
When they want to cover every child with health care, then “poor” is $80,000.
And when they want to raise taxes, the same people are “rich.”
Wonderful.
Percy, I can empathise, but cannot sympathise. But your thoughts do demostrate the perverse and subversive nature of what the progressives seek to accomplish. Simply put, they place us in the position where we begin to concern ourselves with the ostensibly private finances of others. It is well forseen by these types that some of that concern will end up being expressed in the form of all-too-human envy.
Philisophically I reject class warfare as the province of the Marxist. Ordinarily I do not want to concern myself with what others own, earn, or do with their money.
Unfortunately as a member of our polity – a democratic republic – I feel required to take an active interest in the activities of my government. When citizens present themselves as worthy of government largesse what was once private and of no personal concern now becomes a matter of my own concern.
Briefly, I do not resent them for their particular circumstance, nor for their desire to get what they can through begging. I most resent them because they have forced me to delve into their particular circumstances and what I have found is distasteful and, in my own assessment, unworthy of reward or assistance.
JD: Maybe you can get the guv’ment to pay for the euthanizing of midget clowns. Just, you know, not my tax dollars,n’Kay?
Talk about an unfunded mandate. HONK
It’s the Law of Conservation of Privacy, I guess: in order for someone’s violated rights of privacy to be restored, someone else‘s privacy rights have to get violated. See also: Law of Conservation of Filth.
How many cigarettes do we have to smoke to square up the tab of one of these little Frost urchins is what I want to know.
If insurance is so important what about the very necessities of life – food, clothing and shelter. After we get the gov’t to pay for all of that for us then we can spend all of our own money on JetSkis and 4-wheelers and beach houses!!
Good points, otcconan. The difference, of course, is that they’re far, far less explicit about the second point.
How many cigarettes do we have to smoke to square up the tab of one of these little Frost urchins is what I want to know.
I wish they’d propose a margarita tax. I would be willing to drink enough support the whole family.
There are substantive debates to be had about the SCHIP program in general and the proposed expansion in particular. Instead, the Dems and their allies in the MSM chose to demagogue this from Day 1. Their entire argument has been Kanye-esque (“George Bush doesn’t care about children”). Trotting out injured kids is just the latest, but not the most despicable, example.
I think the Democrats here are summed up well with the saying of a great man: “Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain!”
“Business and professional insurance. Same thing.”
Careful, lest I sic my Enormous Swiss Insurance Behemoth (employer) upon you!
The Narrative™ is quite explicit in describing this topic. Pay close attention:
Any tax cut that includes reductions for anybody arbitrarily labeled as “rich” and is proposed and/or enacted by any Republican hereto and forever more is referred to as “Tax Cuts For the Rich,” regardless of the disproportionate (to income) low and middle income tax cuts that it may contain.
ALL HAIL THE NARRATIVE!™
Dan at #15 and 16.
I just follow the logic put out by the left, and come to the conclusions.
I’m not sayin’ the conclusion aren’t bat-guano crazy, but that’s where their ‘logic’ leads.
Humph. “Scientific Socialism”, my arse.
Oh, I am well aware that envy is an ugly emotion, and “populism” can be a dandified word for “mob.” However, if those wealthier than me insist on such things as forced redistributive “justice,” they will find that two can play that game, as well.
Besides, we’re talking about dissenting from the march to socialized healthcare. And dissent is the highest form of patriotism, isn’t it? That’s what I keep hearing.
On PJM’s front page, a few posts down, is Dr. Helen’s quite popular report (four dozen comments) on her interview with parental rights advocate Glen Sacks. The topic is injustice for males — a large portion of which is the State’s war against the family by way of special interest incentivizing misandry, divorce, and eventual dependency by statute.
I’m afraid that I agree with Moron Pundit too, in that we’re looking at a runaway freight train towards socialized health care. We’re also looking, or had better start looking, at how nannystatism is triangulating all about the social fabric. The definition of health care is rapidly expanding to include behavior, called “mental health”, and more than one attempt has been already made to intertwine certain kinds of behaviors, values, and mental conditions with state education. We are steps away from proving ourselves to our masters so as to participate in society. health care is but one facet.
A couple years ago I was a wild-eyed fanatic even around here, condemning social injustice and what passes for social justice as practiced by government at virtually every level. Today we seem to be slowly waking up to the simple fact that;
1. Our government — by “our”, I mean yours — is paid off. Big lobby = public policy. The “women’s lobby” and the trial lawyers and the social services tyrants and the judges themselves appear at every session. They buy law. They own you.
2. All levels of social government, from the VAWA and its enabling minions (hi, Joey Biden, you statist strumpet!) through welfare and TANF, into the trillion-dollar DHHS, and right on back in the form of paying states to break up homes, it’s all in bed together. Check Title IV-D. Check various illegalities by various state’s AG’s. Check DC strong-arming any local government that talks about going out of line.
3. We already know that defeating the patriarchy is Job One for the malcontented misandrists who have had the hutzpah to organize, fund, and dominate the statehouses in the interest of abolishing traditional household values. Did we really think otherwise?
So here we stand. Just how much will we take?
Health care is a means to an end. That end is the collective.
This topic in general hasn’t riveted me, so I may be missing something, but…
…who is attacking or smearing or stalking the kid?
AFAIK, no one. I’ve seen a fair amount about the kid’s parents, but that is no more an attack on the kid than Charlie and the Chocolate Factory:
Karl – NOBODY. That is only happening in the minds of the Left.
expanding the program…
here is the story
Alas, happyfeet, given the decades upon centuries control of the Windy City politics by the Dems, this will not even faze them.
These are the same people that decided they didn’t need all that dirty Wal-Mart sales tax money. Idiots.
” I don’t have any beef with the family declining to share their tax filings; that’s their prerogative.”
Sorry, but I call bullshit on this one. Their right to privacy ends when they start sticking their hands in my wallet. If I gotta subsidize their little yuppie factory, I want to see the books.
Sarcasm detected.
But…
At what point, folks, do we all pile on the 51%+ socialist bandwagon because it’s the only way we can survive?
wow nice find maybee!
I removed it after a reporter for the Baltimore Sun asked me to kill it, because they were doing a story on Malkin.
Michele Malkin should turn the tables and call the reporter for commet.
JHoward – A couple of years ago the topic of taxes came up on another blog, and I noted that given the targeted tax cuts in vogue today, and the fact that the vast majority of income tax is paid by an increasingly smaller percentage of the population, that there will come a point where the receipients wildly outnumber the contributors, and there will be fewer and fewer people striving to be a contributor, rather than recipients. Every Congres, there is an increasing percentage of people that pay no income tax, and there is no end in sight.
# 55 JHoward
“It’s submission that they want
It’s surrender that they need
When we’re doing it their way,
Their aims will be achieved.
Stand up and fight,
And I’ll stand up with you
We will succeed
Stand up and fight,
And I’ll stand up with you.” – The Gauntlet by the Dropkick Murphys
Check out her feet. It’s enough that the dude looks like John Denver with a goatee, but if those are tattoos on that hippy chick’s bare feet… what, what am I supposed to take from that? Nothing of significance, just look away, the same nothing-here-to-see-and-let’s-not-make-too-much-of-that metanarrative?
Has anyone questioned whether hippy-girl bothered to buckle-up her tots? Now I’m sort’a suspicious, just how’d their heads become pinballs? Was hippy-Mom stoned when-and-if Junior met the windshield cause he wasn’t restrained from suddenly becoming an astronaut when-and-if his two-bowl toking Mommy lost her depth perception on an icy road? What’s the story Morning Glory, does she shoot up through her toes or what? Entirely conjecture, implied guilt, yes Ma’am, it is. But I want the details since these two wobblies willingly pushed their soft-noggin’ son, Graeme, front and center into a national political debate on expanded health care coverage.
I’ll add something else. I, too, like Mr. Frost, am a one man corporation. Any third-rate bean counter knows why, namely, because my financial reporting flexibility come tax preparation time is unmatched. No need to discuss those advantages here, but yes, I am further implying something nefarious, as in have there been in commingling of expenses! Diapers do take a bite!
Even with that said, I’m glad Johnny-head-trauma receives the medical care he needs. If these two are card carrying Americans then they’re entitled to that, but something suggests their might be more at play here, such as these to loafers are sucking/gaming the system dry with their we-got-no-money line of hyper-hipppie bullshit.
That’s a good point cause the other kid was apparently ok. And she looks like a hairy-legged potsmoker.
Check out those hippy feet here, my bad
How many times does it take an Aggie to correctly post a hyperlink with html tags?
the $160,000 Halsey Frost paid for his warehouse in 1999
Eight years ago? Anybody want to venture a guess of its value today?
His business is not ‘undercapitalized’ as someone joked earlier today. It’s friggin’ under utilized.
Love the headline of the article. Guess they really aren’t trying to hide their lack of objectivity any longer. And why should they? As Ace puts it: they’re the deciders.
1) Nothing enrages the left more than when they attempt an underhanded maneuver (like trotting out “ultimate moral authority,” playing the victim card, or stealing an election) and it doesn’t work.
Yet another way they’re like spoiled brats – when they don’t get their way, it’s temper tantrum time.
The ONLY reason they’re not all crying into their paper bags every day is that they’ve insinuated themselves in the academy and MSM to such a point that they can pretend their behavior is anything but reprehensible and get sufficient cover for their Bad Actions.
2) Adkins is just a less-brave version of the Crazy Stalker Broad Who Shall Not Be Named, and is playing perfectly to the leftist “off the plantation meme” that causes them to target Mrs. Malkin so viciously because,
3) The #2 Most Enraging Thing to a leftist is when someone they presume to be On Their Side (minorities, the poor, academics, etc.) is willing to point out their flaws. Michelle has had her family threatened, her address and photos of her old (and now her new) house published, people have spread vicious and false rumors about her, photoshopped pictures designed to embarrass her – the attacks on her have been even more vicious than those on Rush Limbaugh because, as a non-honkey, she’s a far greater threat to the integrity of their Narrative. They expect honkey to reject them.
4) It deserves mention again that Adkins is a whiny little shit who is guilty at the very least of harassment with even less justification than the last time this crap happened, which was over her publishing of PUBLIC INFORMATION that the people she was criticizing were PUBLISHING THEMSELVES.
5) The level of gross hypocrisy on the left has broken the poor meter, waging vicious personal attacks while bemoaning the politics of personal destruction, engaging in all manner of corruption and bribery while pointing the finger everywhere else, and cynically trotting out “victims” as if they were human shields and going ballistic when people challenge their manipulations. It’s getting harder and harder to find leftists who are worth debating because of the lies and manipulation, and as I said above, ONLY the MSM and the academy are keeping you afloat.
If the MSM magically started reporting events accurately and without gross distortion and bias, the Democrats would be a “third party” in six months.
If you’re wondering why I’m particularly pissy today, that tax hike is one reason. Particularly when it comes on top of the Cook County sales tax being increased to 11%.
Needless to say, I’m using Mapquest now to locate the nearest malls and grocery stores (ideally operated by Wal-Mart) that lie just over the county line.
Back to the issue at hand: President Bush encouraged 9 states to cover not only kids but poor adults too, mostly poor parents under SCHIP when Republicans controlled congress. Now he’s cynically playing politics trying to look fiscally “responsible†by scuttling the whole program now that Dems are in charge. That won’t happen but it will cost Illinois alone an extra $75 million to push these adults into Medicaid according to the Chicago Tribune, by far a more expensive program to both Illinois and federal taxpayers than SCHIP.
That makes no financial sense at all. But then our whole hodge podge healthcare system which is twice as expensive as most other countries in the world doesn’t either. Hopefully it will make no political sense either when the American people kick the Republican party to the curb next year.
Scuttling the whole program, my ass. Discuss it honestly, and many will be happy to engage. Start off by lying, not so much.
All of these trolls equate health care coverage with Rights.
The funny thing about mark’s post is, I don’t even need to add a #6 to my list, it’s already covered.
Like this makes any sense. But then nonsense is the Dems stock in trade.
That makes no financial sense at all. But then our whole hodge podge healthcare system which is twice as expensive as most other countries in the world doesn’t either. Hopefully it will make no political sense either when the American people kick the Republican party to the curb next year.
Try not to get seriously ill anyplace with socialized medicine. The US is the place where wealthy Canadians and Euros come for major surgeries.
Nothing less impressive than the willfully ignorant. Marko, the hodgepodge you refer to is heavily socialized. It’s the most expensive because it’s the most advanced AND because it’s abused. If you care a lick about this saddled industry and it’s growing tension, you’d admit that it’s ALREADY regulated from stem to stern.
If you had that integrity, you’d take a look yourself. I have. I’ve two young medical specialist friends planning to leave practice at vast personal expense because of regulation. Can’t. Make. A. Living. When you are told what you shall charge and what you shall earn.
Socialism much?
After my husband quit his job earlier this year (to become a full-time stay-at-home dad), we had a choice. We could either buy health insurance from his former employer through a program called COBRA at a cost of more than $1,000 per month(!) or we could go it alone in Maryland’s individual market. Given our financial circumstances, that “choice†wasn’t much of a choice at all. We had to go on our own.
We discovered that the most generous plans in Maryland’s individual market cost $700 per month yet provide no more than $1,500 per year of prescription drug coverage–a drop in the bucket if someone in our family were to be diagnosed with a serious illness.
With health insurance choices like that, no wonder so many people opt to go uninsured.
Michelle Malkin her self, August 27, 2004
http://michellemalkin.com/2004/08/27/americas-broken-health -insurance-system/
I think the point is that Maryland sucks is all. I know this is true cause I’m halfway through season one of The Wire.
sashal
no wonder so many people opt to go uninsured.
Yup. Their choice. Yet your irresponsibility will saddle not only the folks from MD, but also Indiana, Utah, and Oregon with additional costs. Why spend your own money when you can spend mine, huh?
JD.
You are already spending, so do I.
And on the broken unwieldy system.
Comical that Hardliner would call MM a facist. Hardliner is without a doubt a mamber of the Socialist/Communist/Facist (aka democrat) party. The poor attempt to project ‘facism’ to others is all the proof you need. You have a moonbat/facist by the tail and it’s screaming.
That is no reason for me to rely on anyone but me and my better half to provide for the health and welfare of our family. None.
Once again, we are sacrificing the outstanding at the altar of the perfect.
Just because I am already spending does not mean that I should just bend over, and get ready to pay even more. Quite frankly, for actual taxpayers, there is rapidly approaching a time where we should demand results for the taxes paid. Simply acquiescing every time a program like Health Insurance for poor children, teenagers, people in their 20’s, and other adults making less than $82,000 a year will continue to allow the public, and therefore, Congress to continue to expand the class of people who benefit, but do not contribute.
No thanks.
Would a medical collectivist simply show me where there exists any right whatsoever to expensive procedures? I have cancer. Do I have the right to the $2,000,000 check needed to eradicate it? Riddle me that, collectivist.
But first, would such a collectivist prove the lack of fraud needed to operate MY healthcare under such a collective? You know, proof of concept and like that.
Then, would our little collectivist ask me if I wanted to be part of their legislated envy?
See, that’s what this really is: Legislated envy and theft. And all of it predicated on the utterly fraudulent notion of right.
Except there’s no right, there’s no proof of concept (and a hundred years of the opposite) and certainly there’s no honor. I say let’s do it!
Mothers in British Columbia are having a baby boom, but it’s the United States that has to deliver, and that has some proud Canadians blasting their highly touted government healthcare system.
Many states have special health insurance programs for people who cannot qualify for regular health insurance due to pre-existing conditions. California, for one, and Minnesota, for another (I know that because I have lived in both states at one time or another). They provide insurance at a “competitive” cost (can be a little high, but not rediculously so). I am on such a plan right now.
Those plans exist for situations like this one. I would be very surprised if Maryland didn’t have a program like that already.
stupid is the pre-existing condition here
I just noticed, btw, that at the bottom of the Baltimore Sun article it says Sun reporter Lynn Anderson contributed to this article. So it seems likely that that’s who contacted Chuck. If someone already mentioned that – I missed that. Just struck by how enthusiastic Matthew Hay Brown is about using brain-damaged children to push an agenda. I bet at one point he wanted to be a reporter when he grew up.
– “Hopefully it will make no political sense either when the American people kick the Republican party to the curb next year.
– Will this happen about the same time as the winter solatice ’08, when Maddona gets to be “Like a Virgin” again?
– Dan…A spokeswoman was on FOX today defending the situation. When asked if the fact that this past year over 100 expectant mothers had to flee to the States for lack of a single ICU for newborns, or special care clinics for birth complications in the ENTIRE country of Canada bothers her, her response was:
– “Well yes, its true we lack certain “high-level” health facilities, but you have to understand we service a much larger populice by limiting treatment for serious illness and the attendent heavy costs.”
– Which is a sideways way of saying: “If you need an asparin or an arm sling, we’re your go-to guys. If you’re really sick….well cremation is cheap.”
– Remember Komrads, the life you sacrifice to the Socialized medicine industry just makes the collective stronger – (this trVthiness message brought to you by Laika, the space dog, beaming TrVth to tin-hats everywhere since 1957)
Also – notice that the only hyperlink in the Sun story is to Michelle Malkin. So while boy reporter Matthew wants to make his story all about how uncivil he thinks the right is, he doesn’t want to give his readers any flavor of the comments on the left.
– I don’t think it was a reporter that scared Chuckie. I think someone that visits his blog, and is law savey pointed out to him that publishing private info without permission might indicate an attempt to put that person in danger from the loonier elements in your political gaggle, and might be conscrued as needless, mean-spirited wredckless endangerment by a judge, particularly since the target has taken steps to keep said info private. That sort of effort always weighs heavily in intellectual property and harrassment laws.
I’m not sure. Michelle is on the tv so she’s a celebrity just like Mayim Bialik and Lacey Chabert. They have like this funny bus around here that takes you right to tv people’s houses. I guess it’s a fine line, but it seems a lot like the liability people sometimes want to put on videogames or the heavy metal music, what you suggest here.
– Malice is a tricky proposition in a court of law, particularly if any harmful acts occur, and your publishing of the info is the only example. As assholish as Chuckie may ne, and obviously inexperienced, I wouldn’t think he’d be happy with a multi-million dollar suit riding on a roll of the dice. Not smart by any measure. No matter how fanatical you are about your politics, sometimes it pays to be prudent.
I see what you’re saying, but I still don’t put it past the little girl from the Baltimore Sun to run interference for Matthew in the way Chuck describes. Matthew really wanted to write the story he wrote, and he had already been burnt the first time around pretty bad since his first article was such an obvious Democratic press release once more facts came to light.
– Feets, it could be both things are correct. The Repoter may have nemtioned his potential liability, since reporters are generally well versed in such things, having been warned by the suits that the 1st amendment only goes just so far. For an example of “Malice aforethought” see “C. Burrnett versus The National Inquirer”. They didn’t treat her dead daughter very nice.
Two college graduates that make a combined $45-50K per year. Just slightly above the wages of two high school dropouts at McDonalds. Says a lot about the failed educational system ran by the anti-american left wing democrats doesn’t it? One high school graduate or someone with a GED can make more than that alone in the U.S. military. More proof that left wing democrats are born stupid and choose to stay that way.
Ok, there are quite a few silly-assed points being made about this family, and this is one of the more silly, IMO. Thor, nothing personal, but I and a lot of people like me don’t really give a rat’s ass whether this woman is a “hippy” or not. I care not whether she has tats. That you care is all well and good, but ultimately irrelevant. I don’t have tats myself, and I tend to keep my hair short and my face shaved, and tend to dress with some modicum of tidiness, but I don’t expect that everyone, everywhere values the same things as I do. And that’s all I have to say about that one.
About their house, though: use Google Earth, folks, and take a look at that neighborhood. It’s basically solid row houses; no yards, and it looks like refried shit from the air. The fact that their home might be worth some money today means little, because where would they move to? I know, there’s always rural Alabama or Mississippi.
I just think that the debate over public healthcare is a bit larger, and deserves a little more of than the anecdotal debate (and yes, I am fully aware that the anecdotal debates have been amply furnished by those in favor of centralized public healthcare) that the dissection of the Frost’s personal situation has so far resulted in. Noted: the Frosts don’t represent “working poor” in general. Move on, already.
Slarti,
Is this about healthcare or asset protection? The kids would have received care even if the parents had not signed them up for S-CHIP. The care couldn’t be denied by any hospital receiving a dime of fed gravy. Without S-CHIP (or private insurance) the parents would have been liable for the cost of treatment and their assets would have been a forfeit for their having taken the risk.
One of the reasons that the existing S-CHIP coverage is not universally used is that the “real” poor understand that treatment is available at no cost – so even the nominal $5 per month charged by some states is “wasted money”. In the instance at hand, the parents are paying about $208 per month (if I’m reading the Maryland program correctly) to cover two thirds of the risk to their assets. It’s actually not that good a decision because the one third uncovered risk (the parents themselves) includes 100% of the income providers.
Miz Clinton has picked a very good area to work the fear and greed angle – fear about asset protection wrt shelter (and that equity nest egg) is very strong. It’s also a real driver behind the “housing bubble” nonsense (nonsense because it’s a regional problem that doesn’t even involve oversupply). Generate enough fear and the mommy party wins damn near every time. It’s been that way since President for Life Roosevelt and we’re down to arguing whether letting the second hump into the tent will cause additional discomfort.
I’m not disputing that. I’m just saying this whole dissection of their finances is pretty much immaterial to the SCHIP debate, and the debate on government-run healthcare in general. This isn’t about the Frosts, and never was. Sure, Dems put them on the radio. Why should we grant that it’s all about the Frosts by making it even mroe all about the Frosts?
It is true, though, that emergency healthcare is widely available. The question in my mind is: given that we already have, in effect, limited-scope public health insurance, is what’s in place now the best implementation?