And that was the only thing icwhatudo got wrong.
Have you bothered reading the shifting explanations for how, exactly, the Frosts DO manage to send their children to pricey private schools (which the children also attended before the accident, when the family allegedly "couldn't afford" health insurance)?
- Jim Manley, flak for Harry Reid, insists the children get "almost full scholarships"
- Mr. Reilly, Halsey Frost's commercial tenant (who has known the Frosts for 10 years) says it was his understanding that Frost's wealthy parents paid the tuition
- Now, according to Matthew Hay Brown in yesterday's Baltimore Sun, the story is that "The four Frost children depend on financial aid to attend private school."
Reporter Matthew Hay Brown doesn't bother to inform us
1. how much "financial aid" was provided
2. who provided it
3. whether the "financial aid" is/was a loan or a grant.
I’m not arguing that this is an impoverished family that should get heath insurance/health care paid for by the taxpayers. I’m arguing that we need to be very careful when launching this sort of attack. When we stick to documentable facts (e.g. as Buckhead and Little Green Footballs did with regard to “Memogate”), we have a great deal more impact, and give ourselves a lot more credibility, than if we present a pile accusations, including some significant ones that we have no evidence for, and that political opponents can quickly put us on the spot over.
When the matter under debate is the ability of a family to afford private health insurance, claiming they had $40,000 a year to spend on private school tuition, when in fact they did no such thing, is not a minor detail. We would do much better to ask questions like, why, with the education and family wealth that they have, they are earning so little money. The real answer is likely to be that they choose not to do types of work that would pay better, because they have ways of maintaining a very comfortable lifestyle without doing better paying work. That’s an uncomfortable fact that wouldn’t sit well with many of the truly financially troubled people who push their representatives to vote for programs like this.
What’s unfortunately getting lost in the shuffle is the problem that formal income is the only criteria for eligibility for this program. Assets don’t count! You could have a billion dollars worth of assets, and as long as you’ve got them invested in things (e.g. art, jewelry) that don’t produce actual income for tax purposes, you can qualify for this program.