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Here’s a funny thing. Before the accident, they could have afforded health insurance. But they decided not to spend the money.

When they needed health coverage, the existing SCHIP program covered them. This is a Republican program that gave them what they needed, after they failed to protect their own family.

They don’t need the expansion of the program, so they are a meaningless distraction to the fight, but one the Democrats chose for just this purpose.

But here’s the funny thing. Under any democratic proposal for universal health care, this family would have been forced to buy health insurance. Because universal health care can’t work if you don’t force healthy people to pay for it.

This family had a CHOICE of whether to buy insurance. If they had made the right choice, they’d still have insurance today. But in fact, it may have well been the “wrong” choice since I paid for their health insurance after they failed to do so.

Why would anybody buy health insurance if someone else is willing to pay for their treatment?

I would say that some of the pundits have gone way overboard. The issue was NEVER whether this family was cheating the system — it was only whether this family was really an example of why the program needed to be expanded.

In fact, this family was covered under the program before, and would be covered under Bush’s proposal to increase funding for the program. We don’t need to fight over whether they should have been refused, or whether they have too much money, because that’s not the point.

The point is that the Democrats have cut off this family from the program. They are holding millions of families like this HOSTAGE, to blackmail the president into approving an expansion which is NOT to help these needy families but instead to pay off another few million voters to re-elect democrats.

And the Democrats want to do this by taxing poor cigarette smokers, some for more than $400 extra a year.

We shouldn’t have gone from exposing the truth to attacking the messenger (not us here on FR, but some have done so). Although I don’t think ANYBODY has attacked the kid, some have attacked the family, not on facts but just attacked them.

There’s nothing wrong with pointing out that the family is a solid middle-class family who made choices but still got SCHIP coverage under the old program. There’s no problem in highlighting that this family HAD the choice to buy medical insurance, and chose not to. But while other attacks may be “fun”, they detract from the message.

We need to get back to winning arguments by our ideas, not our ability to call people names.