Posted on 10/09/2007 5:21:39 AM PDT by radar101
ABC News' Rick Klein Reports: With debate raging in Washington over children's health insurance, congressional Democrats found a new way to make their case for an expansion last weekend: Rather than have a senator or a congressman respond to President Bush's weekly radio address, they decided to have a child who was helped by the program speak directly to the public.
But the 12-year-old boy whom Democrats chose as their poster child is now at the center of a firestorm in Washington and beyond. Conservative bloggers who uncovered some details of the family's finances are blasting the family, calling the fact that they rely on federal insurance an example of how the State Children's Health Insurance Program has expanded beyond its original intent.
According to Senate Democratic aides, some bloggers have made repeated phone calls to the home of 12-year-old Graeme Frost, demanding information about his family's private life. On Monday, a spokesman for Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid accused GOP leadership aides of "pushing falsehood" in an effort to distract from the political battle over S-CHIP.
"This is a perverse distraction from the issue at hand," said Jim Manley, a spokesman for Reid, D-Nev. "Instead of debating the merits of providing health care to children, some in GOP leadership and their right-wing friends would rather attack a 12-year-old boy and his sister who were in a horrific car accident."
Manley cited an e-mail sent to reporters by a Senate Republican leadership aide, summing up recent blog traffic about the boy's family. A spokesman for Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., declined to comment on Manley's charge that GOP aides were complicit in spreading disparaging information about Frosts.
In making the case for a proposed expansion of the S-CHIP program, Democrats found a boy who seemed like an ideal poster child in Graeme Frost, a Baltimore native whose family does not have private health insurance.
When Graeme and his sister were seriously injured in a 2004 car crash, their parents relied on S-CHIP coverage to help them recover. After House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's office became aware of the Frosts through a healthcare interest group, FamiliesUSA, Democratic leaders turned to Graeme to deliver the party's weekly radio address Sept. 29.
"If it weren't for CHIP, I might not be here today," Frost said in the address, which was written by Senate Democratic aides. "We got the help we needed because we had health insurance for us 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."
But after a largely positive story about Frost appeared in the Baltimore Sun, conservative-leaning bloggers began focusing on details of Frost's family situation. They suggested the family makes the conservative argument -- that the children's health insurance program has strayed from its original purpose by subsidizing healthcare for middle-class families, not just poor children.
A blogger on FreeRepublic.com discovered that Frost and his sister, Gemma, attend a private school where tuition costs $20,000 a year. Their father, Halsey, is a self-employed woodworker, meaning that if his family doesn’t have health insurance, it’s because Halsey Frost -- as his own boss -- chooses not to purchase it for himself.
"One has to wonder that if time and money can be found to remodel a home, send kids to exclusive private schools, purchase commercial property and run your own business . . . maybe money can be found for other things," a blogger with the handle "icwhatudo" wrote on FreeRepublic.
That posting was widely circulated in the blogosphere, making great fodder for conservatives who argue that President Bush was right to veto the Democrats’ bill expanding S-CHIP.
"People make choices and it's clear the Frosts have made choice to invest in property and a business, but not in private health insurance," Mark Tapscott, editorial page editor of The Washington Examiner, wrote on his blog.
But Manley say conservative bloggers didn't dig deep enough. It turns out that the Frost children attend Baltimore’s Park School on near-full scholarships; they pay roughly $500 per child per year in tuition, he said.
Like many small-business owners, Halsey Frost can't even afford to provide health insurance to himself, Manley said.
"Last year, the Frost's made $45,000 combined," Manley said. "Over the past few years they have made no more than $50,000 combined depending on Halsey's ability to find work."
The Frost family did not immediately return calls seeking comment.
Thank you for pointing this out. I'm sure Frost couldn't get a mortgage or take out a loan on his property without insurance. Are his kids less important than his woodworking studio?
"Given that the Frosts may honestly believe that government should play a wider role in providing health care to individuals, given that they may not have quite the same understanding of parenthood that you and I share, and given that they are likely within the parameters of the law, which itself is a moral teacher, I can’t condemn the Frosts for what they’ve done."
Partially delivering a full term baby and then sticking a needle into the base of the baby's skull in order to remove the brain is also legal. It isn't moral, in fact it's abhorent. So the law is not always a moral teacher, sometimes it is the exact opposite and it seems that in this case the law is not a moral teacher either if one considers gaming money out of other folks pockets who have less assets than they do immoral.
And using your children as props in a political debate is, well like I said, despicable.
1. Abortion is intrinsically evil. We’ve already established that it is not intrinsically evil for the government to help folks with health insurance for their kids.
Many people deceive themselves morally by reasoning from a morally permissible circumstance to one that is similar, but not morally permissible.
2. Unfortunately, in the case of abortion, the law IS a moral teacher. I don’t know about you, but I’ve run into so many people, even church-going Catholics, who partially justify access to abortion because it is legal. Screwy to me - sorta backwards.
I was taught that legalism as a moral system is fundamentally logically flawed. I guess some folks missed school the day that was covered.
By making an evil act "lawful," the law normalizes behavior, even the most monstrous behavior.
The law is a moral teacher, even when it teaches what is evil.
sitetest
Someone needs to contact Mr. MANLEY at Reid’s office that put out the info that the Frosts only pay $500.00 a year and that the kids are on full scholarship!! Mr. MANLEY needs to show up PROOF, dontcha think?
Many people deceive themselves morally by reasoning from a morally permissible circumstance to one that is similar, but not morally permissible.
Now, you're dabbling in sophistry and self deception. My only point here is to demonstrate that your view of legal is woefully insufficient to justify actions.
2. Unfortunately, in the case of abortion, the law IS a moral teacher. I don’t know about you, but I’ve run into so many people, even church-going Catholics, who partially justify access to abortion because it is legal. Screwy to me - sorta backwards.
No, the law is NOT always a moral teacher and I find it puzzling that a man of your obvious talents can not see that. The lesson of Roe V Wade and Doe v Bolton is not a moral one but an amoral one, that being that unborn human beings are not human beings at all but simply lumps of tissue to be dispensed with as one would a set of tonisils. The lesson is both amoral and scientific nonsense.
The law is a moral teacher, even when it teaches what is evil.
This is what I mean by sophistry. Only a sophist would make such a claim. Moral and evil are not synonyms sitetest, not now or ever. The law can be moral, amoral or immoral which all have vastly different meanings.
“Now, you’re dabbling in sophistry and self deception.”
No, rather I’m suggesting that perhaps Mr. Frost is dabbling in sophistry and self-deception.
“No, the law is NOT always a moral teacher...”
We may be using the words a little differently.
I don’t mean that the law always teaches rightly, but rather that the law always teaches about right and wrong, even when it gets things wrong.
By way of analogy, what I mean is that the law is a moral teacher - a teacher of morality - just like someone at my old high school was a religion teacher - a teacher of religion. I went to a Catholic high school, and thus a good religion teacher would have taught well the Catholic faith. But unfortunately, not every religion teacher did so. Some taught in a way to steal young men away from their Catholicism. These religion teachers were bad religion teachers.
But they were still religion teachers.
In the same way, the law is ALWAYS a moral teacher - a teacher of what is moral. Unfortunately, when the law is objectively wrong, objectively evil, it teaches what is evil as good, and what is good as evil. Thus, the law is still teaching about morality, is still a moral teacher - a teacher of morality - but fails in its obligation to teach RIGHTLY.
Although there exists an objective moral code, there also exist personal moral codes and societal moral codes. There may be differences between an individual’s moral code and the objective moral code, and there may be differences between a society’s moral code and the objective moral code.
Obviously, the differences represent falsehoods in the moral codes of individuals and societies.
Nonetheless, these subjective moral codes, with errors in them, exist, even exist objectively in a sense.
In a society, the moral code derives in part from the law. What many people accept as moral derives from what is the law. The law teaches them that a thing is right or wrong.
In the case of abortion, the law, by way of Roe, teaches that abortion is moral, that it is, after all, a constitutional “right.”
The law, as moral teacher, is wrong. The law teaches evil as good, and good as evil. The law, as moral teacher, fails in its obligation to teach truthfully, substituting lies for the truth.
Nonetheless, it still teaches, and claims for its teaching the dignity of justice and morality.
sitetest
Hold up there. If I'm reading this correctly and put it with what I've read on other, related, threads: Mr. Frost, being currently 26, and his kid in the commercial being 12 - that would mean he had this baby at 14? Does anybody know if Graem/Graham/Grame is the oldest of the 4 Frostlets?
I also read that he bought his house in 1992 - when he was 13? 12?
The math isn't adding up for me.
He was 26 in 1992 when he got married. I have the link to his wedding annoucement that was in the NYT in posts 74 and 75.
WOO HOO!!!
I could see if this family was down to their last dollar, but the details say otherwise. My own similar situation: My husband was out of work six months, I was four months pregnant, but he paid for cobra out of his own darn pocket because he knew where his priorities were. These people are gaming the system, pure and simple./Just Asking - seoul62.........
Mr. Frost needs to get himself a full time job, along with his once in a while job, and pay for his own blasted insurance. Others of us have to work to support our families. I’m tired of all this entitlement stuff for people who really could work if they wanted to.
$20,000 really seems high to me. We have a private Christian school in our church and the cost is around $4,000 per student, cheaper if other siblings attend.
Well said. Also, health insurance is one of those “things” that should be considered “needed” but is an afterthought to way too many families.
It ticks me off that we have to keep sacrificing and paying for those who have entitlement issues, don’t want to get a darn job, etc. But it also ticks me off that senior trips are to freakin’ disneyworld and that’s normal and band trips are sheduled out of state with no info 6 months prior, like everyone can afford to pay for these trips last minute. We’re far from poor despite what our kids think and the attitude of this country is so far from what and how I grew up that I’m out of the loop.
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