SCHIP Family 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 haveeverything we need, but the hospital bills were huge. We got the help we neededbecause 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?