Media Fail at Fact Checking on 12 Year Old Voice of SCHIP; Blogs(Free Republic) Pick Up Slack

NewsBusters ^ | October 7, 2007

[Eric Blair 2084]

The media piled on when President Bush used his veto pen on this children's health insurance bill. They tried to drop the absolute moral authority bomb on it big time and paint him as not caring about children. Now it looks like a little backfire is on the horizon.

On September 29th, 12 year old Graeme Frost of Maryland got to do the Democrats’ radio address, in which he told his story of how he and his sister were seriously injured in a car accident, and if it hadn’t been for SCHIP, they wouldn’t be here today. The Baltimore Sun did a story on the family, in which it stated the family couldn’t get health insurance through their work.

"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."

There were many others in the media that swallowed the story whole with its hook. All of them were missing greatly in one major thing, facts.

Freerepublic's icwhatudo, managed to find plenty of missing facts using google:

"First, Mr. Halsey Frost, Graeme’s father, owns his own woodworking design studio, Frostworks, so his claim that he can’t get health insurance through work is shockingly deceptive. He chooses not to get health care for his family. Second, Graeme and his sister Gemma attend the very exclusive Park School, which has a tuition of $20,000 a year, per child. Third, they live in a 3,000+ square foot home in a neighborhood with smaller homes that are selling for at least $400,000. "

Dan Collins concludes:

"I’m glad little Graham and his family were able to get help, and I hope he reaches full rehabilitation. But perhaps the Democrats ought to take more care in the spokespeople they choose, if they wish to tug at our heartstrings."

Then again, as Mark Steyn says:

"But who needs facts when you've got the human-interest angle sewn up?"

Roundup of blogosphere reactions at Stop The ACLU

[Lizavetta]

The Baltimore Sun article says the family couldn’t find private health insurance for less than $1200 a month.

Sorry, I'm calling bullshit on that one.

Here in Taxifornia we are paying about $600 a month for catastrophic care Blue Shield coverage for the entire family, with deductibles of $2,400 per person or $4,800 per family.

[colorado tanker]

The kids were covered by SCHIP. President Bush supports re-upping SCHIP, but opposes it's expansion to people making even more money. So, these kids were covered under the existing plan and would be covered under whatever plan Congress passes and Bush signs.

What am I missing here?

[Eric Blair 2084]

icwhatudo is either:

Too humble to take a bow
Too important now that he is famous
Too busy lining up interviews at Fox and CNN

[God luvs America]

I tend to agree with you...dot the i’s and cross the t’s to make sure you CYA but a few things stand out....

-people who live in 3000 sq ft homes with appraised values of $400K are usually not eligible for scholarships...

- scholarships are usually for college and very few are handed out for kids who want to go to private school if they have access to public school...

- someone posted the wedding announcement of this couple from 1992 (I think the link is in this thread)....the woman is actually from Bronxville; right down the road from where I am typing this now...in this announcement from 1992 it says the groom “owns Frost Woodworks in Baltimore”...hence he’s had the business for at least 15 years and non-profitable businesses usually don’t last that long....if in FACT they show an income of $45K and the guy owns his own business it could be a case where he actually makes $150K but shows less to avoid taxes....

[BillyBonebrake]

The comments attached to that article are great. The liberals get their collective a$$ kicked. Hard. Love it!

[rhetorica]

Wedding announcement from the NY Times for Halsey and Bonnie Frost. Poor people do not tend to get wedding announcements in the NY Times. Nor do they have families that were involved in designing “several public buildings in New York.”

WEDDINGS; Bonnie Sebring, Halsey Frost
Print Save Share
Del.icio.usDiggFacebookNewsvinePermalinkPublished: December 20, 1992
Bonnie Lynn Sebring, a daughter of Mr. and Mrs. James R. Sebring Sr. of Sparks, Md., was married yesterday to Frederick Halsey Frost, the son of Mr. and Mrs. A. Corwin Frost of Bronxville, N.Y. The Rev. Anne Reed performed the ceremony at Immanuel Episcopal Church in Glencoe, Md.

Mrs. Frost, 26 years old, is a receptionist at the Cat Hospital at Towson, in Baltimore. She graduated from Towson State University. Her father is an electrical engineer at Tracor Inc., a defense electronics manufacturer in Crystal City, Va.

Mr. Frost, also 26, is known as Halsey. He owns Frostworks, a woodworking and furniture-design studio in Baltimore. His mother, Randy Frost, is a quilt artist. His father is the deputy director of design and construction for the City University of New York in Manhattan. The bridegroom’s late grandfather Frederick G. Frost Jr. was an architect responsible for several public buildings in New York, including Martin Luther King High School in Manhattan..

[airborne]

Or enjoying the Columbus Day vacation with his/her family.

[airborne]

Well done FRiend!

[meyer]

So regardless...how to they pay tuition of $20k for 2 kids and a $400k home on 45 grand? Either A- they lied or B- the MSM lied.

I choose "C" - they both lied. It was no mistake that the lamestream media didn't notice this little financial error - they ignored it and hoped that everyone else would as well. They've chosen their side, and it isn't the side of truth.

[Republican Red]

My husband & I are self employed. We have Kaiser Permanente’s Personal Plan. My husband is a smoker and we have two kids. The premiums are $604 per month.

Expensive, yes, but it’s not $1200 per month.

[silverleaf]

http://www.parkschool.net/admission/index.cfm?type=list&objectid=232

Two kids at Park School and he wants “the government” (me) to pay for his kids’ health insurance?

BTW- don’t all schools offer accident insurance policies to their students? My kids were offered a group insurance plan that covered them either at school or for a higher premium, for any incident during the school year.

[DocRock]

Anyone see a pattern>? Hillary, Gore and Kerry all used phony human props to cite their position on health care insurance.

---

During John Kerry's nomination acceptance speech during the 2004 DNC, he trotted out his health insurance "poster child", Mary Ann Knowles. Kerry stated that she had to "keep working day after day right through her chemotherapy, no matter how sick she felt, because she was terrified of losing her family's health insurance". In reality, she had excellent coverage with 26 weeks of paid disability leave, but she chose to work through most of her treatment because her husband was unemployed.

Video of Kerry's Speech

Links to story on FR

---

Al Gore tried this same tactic in 2000 with Winifred Skinner.

Al Gore said, "It brings tears to your eyes. Here's this adorable, elderly woman out in Iowa who's so sick and so poor, that in order to pay for medicines she needs to stay alive, she has to scavenge in a local dump yard for cast-off tin cans."

"She gets a small pension," he said. "But in order to pay for her prescription drug benefits she has to go out seven days a week, several hours a day, picking up cans."

It turns out, as the statement was rectified, Mrs. Skinner goes out zero days a week, for zero hours a day, and that she was only speaking "in the name of" people she assumes must do this.

---

In 1994, Hillary Clinton used Kathy Bush when citing her case as an example of the high cost of medical care.

Later, investigators found her mother guilty of intentionally making her daughter sick and forcing her to undergo more than 40 needless surgeries, in what prosecutors called a case of Munchausen Syndrome by Proxy.

Link

[GovernmentShrinker]

Has anyone in your family ever had cancer — even a readily curable one? Anyone have type 1 diabetes? Multiple sclerosis? Crohn’s disease? Epilepsy? We know absolutely nothing about this family’s medical history prior to the children’s injuries, so we know absolutely nothing about what it would have cost them to get private medical insurance that would have covered these serious injuries. Why pretend we do, when we don’t? It’s just an invitation to get discredited in the media when somebody comes forward with solid evidence supporting what the family said.

[silverleaf]

I know that most/all health insurers won’t touch an accident victim’s medical bills until after the auto insurers have paid. Did this family have auto insurance or do they expect Predient Bush to pay for that too?

[Socratic]

Little Graeme is organizing a school baseball team. It’s called the Baltimore Grifters. (Like father, like son.)

[boop]

"First, Mr. Halsey Frost, Graeme’s father, owns his own woodworking design studio, Frostworks, so his claim that he can’t get health insurance through work is shockingly deceptive. He chooses not to get health care for his family"

Not to put too fine a point on this, but how do they make house payments? 45,000 per year combined and you keep having kids you can't support. After even the basics, how do you have anything left over for a mortgage payment on even a 200K home?

[Publius6961]

SCHIP is cute and very saddam-esque, right up there with the "Baby Milk Factory", but it skips a few steps.

Let me back up and start with this gem:

"Reminds me of a fascinating quote from a Chinese Com government during the "International Woman's Conference" held in China during the Clinton administration. The government official said that they studied Hillary's speechmaking method to understand her power and success.
They concluded: her trick was never actually to make any arguments -- just state conclusions that were all already accepted as self-evident by her audience.

What's the connection?
The premise behind all the hand wringing. A game I refuse to join, since I reject the premise in its entirety.

When did the health of children stop being one of the primary obligations of parenthood?

Until that question is debated thoroughly and persuasively, the SCHIP "controversy" is a manufactured crisis, perhaps a totally fraudulent one.

The "family" cited here is a prime example. Living high on the hog and expecting, perhaps demanding that others pay for their kid's health care.
Somehow, having everyone paying for everyone else's kids' health care, and having the government in charge of the whole scam will make it cheaper than caring for one's own children directly.

When, exactly, did that notion begin to make sense to anyone other than a politician?

[GRRRRR]

This whole ‘self employed woodworker’ thing makes me wonder...how much CASH business does he do?
If they have two kids in private skool...that’s $40K a year JUST for tuition...

I have ‘a friend’ who owns his own contracting business and there’s a good chance much of the work is ‘under the table’...

Wonder if the IRS has gotten a whiff of this phoney baloney (bologna)...???

[boop]

"The fact that we didn’t take the boy’s word for it, and checked out the story to see if it was true, just shows how mean-spirited conservatives are. lol"

Even better, the Baltimore Sun admits that the speech was written by senate staffers and rehearsed until Graeme "got it right". So the entire thing was a set up by the democrats to use as propaganda against Bush. You're right how DARE republicans even question how democrat activist kids were used as props in a DNC ad.

[GovernmentShrinker]

Most expensive private schools offer LOTS of scholarships. I went to an expensive private school and had several classmates who were on full scholarships, including one who had 3 sisters also on full scholarship at the school. As for the home, it’s the equity in the home that would count, along with the parents income. Little home equity and very modest income can easily meet the test for a scholarship.

In the early 1990s real estate crash, I had a nephew on full scholarship at a very elite school. His family was living in a house which had recently been on the market for $12 million. The family never had any equity in the house. It was bought with 100% financing from a bank which felt it would easily resell at a huge profit after some renovations, which the family was well-qualified to oversee. After the family had to declare bankruptcy (the father was a mortgage broker and that business had dropped through the floor), the bank let them keep living in the house for several years at no cost, until the market recovered, since they maintained the place well. But they had very, very low income during those years. Just because a business has been profitable for a number of years, doesn’t mean it stays that way, whether due to a change in the economic cycle, new competitors, liability suits, or any number of other factors.