Posted on 10/10/2007 4:42:36 AM PDT by kristinn
SNIP
The onslaught began over the weekend, a week after 12-year-old Graeme Frost delivered the Democrats' weekly radio address with a plea to Bush to sign the bill. A contributor to the conservative Web site Free Republic noted Graeme's enrollment in the private Park School and the sale of a smaller rowhouse on the Frosts' block for $485,000 this year and questioned whether the family should be taking advantage of the state program.
SNIP
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...
SNIP
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.
Halsey Frost purchased a 1920 warehouse in East Baltimore for $160,000 in 1999, according to city records. It is assessed at $160,500. Frost says he is still paying off the mortgages on both properties.
The four Frost children depend on financial aid to attend private school, the Frosts say. In addition, they say, Gemma receives money from the city for special education made necessary by her injuries.
(Excerpt) Read more at baltimoresun.com ...
Insurance companies do not have to provide medical insurance. My niece has diabetes, and the only place she can get medical insurance is through the state.
Have you seen this? Congrats, btw.
http://chickenhawkexpress.blogspot.com/2007/10/exposed-dems-scam-response-to-schip.html
You claim that this family could well afford health insurance but how do you know that? Sure if the father didn’t buy the building for his carpentry shop, they would have saved money on that mortgage, but then he would have had to pay rent, which might have been just as much. They have made money on their house, but if they sold it, I doubt they could buy anything much cheaper. Tuition at the private school was primarily paid through financial aid. I would imagine insurance for a family of 6 would be equivalent to the cost of my family’s insurance (approximately 850/month)
If this family wouldn’t have come out in favor of universal health care, I doubt anyone here would have a problem with 2 working parents, investing in a small business and sending their children to a private school (especially the anti public school fanatics) Yet, now we disagree with their views on healthcare, and we are going to criticize everything they do??? Is the case against universal healthcare so weak that we have resorted to this? I always thought it was pretty strong.
The ONLY thing about this story really important is that the parents COULD afford to buy insurance BEFORE the accident and Chose NOT to!!!
Plus it sounds like the Frost Grandparents "DONATE" $40,000.00 a year...TAX WRITE OFF...and the School gives the grandkids almost FREE tuition! Sounds like a TAX DODGE to me!
If your niece WORKS for a company that provides health care insurance for all other employess EXCEPT for your niece, then you have a HUGE LAWSUIT on your hands just waiting. Is that the case?
I don’t know if anyone else has mentioned this, but I found it interesting that the Baltimore Sun chose to photograph the Frosts’ sitting on (I assume) their front steps for this article. The photo makes the houses look a lot smaller than they are in reality.
What’s wrong with an interior shot? Did the Frosts’ receive too much bad PR over the photo of them in their kitchen?
I have nothing against any of their choices so long as they are not relying on my tax payments.
The minute I am paying for their choices, they are fair game.
There is no reason why two reasonably well-educated people could not have obtained some sort of employment that does provide health insurance if their attempt at self-employment was not successful enough to provide basic necessities.
Their options should not have been to go on the dole, but to change their situation. There is PLENTY of work out there for carpenters. Just look at the want ads.
My niece is 22 years old and she is unemployed. She does some programming and some website design consulting work and has been unable to secure medical insurance on her own. She graduated in May, and will need to roll off of her parents insurance in December when she turns 23. She is basically uninsurable.
BTW there are plenty of people who are not able to secure health insurance because of pre-existing conditions. Private insurance companies generally avoid covering those with high risk or chronic problems, which tend to generate a large volume of medical costs. Governmental insurance is the only way most of these people can ever get insurance.
part time employment does not usually provide benefits. Are you sure all of the carpentry positions provide health insurance??? Many of these jobs don’t include benefits because they are so expensive to provide and require a lot time to monitor and control.
I think starting a small business is a great thing. It does take a while to get financially on your feet. Everyone is not going to be able to afford insurance at the beginning. This is one of the limitations of our current healthcare system. Nothing that would require complete government control of our healthcare, but definately a limitation.
Think the Sun's photographer for today's photo might've have artfully posed Mr. Frost's hand -- to cover the other tattoo?
If so, there's more than one thing being covered up by the Baltimore Sun.
Having been inside a similar Baltimore City rowhouse, I can tell you they are quite narrow.
Still, since a much smaller rowhouse than the Frost's --and just down the street from theirs-- sold for something like $475,000 recently, it's clear there are buyers willing to pay handsomely for them.
Also, though the house is narrow, it has three stories. So the square footage is apparently 3000+ IIRC. It's not a tiny hovel.
I support some of the choices these parents have made and have made many of them myself. However, some of those choices had to be put off until I could afford to move forward with them. I never considered doing any of them at the risk of my kids (or me) not having health care coverage or, asking tax payers to pay it for me. It just was never an option. But, that’s just me.
To be fair, he may very well have done the cabinetry himself, which is immensely cheaper than store-bought or custom work if you have the tools and know-how.
I do think the question of whether the children were buckled up is pertinent to the story.
Why? Because it's all of a piece with the Drive-By-Media's cover-up of the real facts behind this family's situation.
Uuntil today, the DBM have done everything they could to carry the Dems' water, and not hold the Frost parents accountable for anything.
Note that the DBM have assiduously avoided mention of any parental responsibility for the accident, at least until today's article. (Thus we had reporters using absurdly evasive language to avoid mentioning the driver, e.g. "the children were injured when the family's SUV hit black ice and skidded into a tree."
If a well-known conservative had been driving that vehicle, and her children were injured (God forbid), do you think the DBM would be giving her a pass on questions about whether the children had been seat-belted in? Not on your life!
Didn't the original story only mention to two oldest children going to private school, and left the status of the other two children vague. Now they say that all the children are going to private school?
-PJ
But if what you say is true, let's be "fair" to the taxpayer, too.
If Mr. Frost put in many hours fashioning his own kitchen cabinets, might not that time have been better spent in gainful employment -- so he could've spared the taxpayers the expense of paying for his childrens' medical care?
(Also, minor point to khnyny: Today's article says the kitchen countertops are concrete, not granite. But as icwhatudo notes: Concrete countertops are actually MORE expensive than granite!)
What the article does not mention is that Halsey Frost has owned his own company “Frostworks”,since this marriage announcement in the NY Times in 1992 so he chooses to not give himself insurance. He also employed his wife as “bookkeeper and operations management” prior to her recent 2007 hire at the “medical publishing firm”. As her employer, he apparently denied her health insurance as well.
Thus, the Frosts could have shown an appropriate level of concern for themselves and their children by purchasing medical insurance for themselves and their children through their business, making it fully deductible, a privilege persons who don't own their own businesses lack. Instead they chose to go bare and impose the consequences of their irresponsibility on everybody else. Perfect parasitic DemonRat poster children.
OMG....Mrs. Frost has a TATTOO on her CHEST!!! YUK!!
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