S-CHIP, Graeme Frost, Peach Care, and stuff like that

Paul Krugman outlines the story in the New York Times.

Two weeks ago, the Democratic response to President Bush’s weekly radio address was delivered by a 12-year-old, Graeme Frost. Graeme, who along with his sister received severe brain injuries in a 2004 car crash and continues to need physical therapy, is a beneficiary of the State Children’s Health Insurance Program. Mr. Bush has vetoed a bipartisan bill that would have expanded that program to cover millions of children who would otherwise have been uninsured.

What followed should serve as a teaching moment.

First, some background. The Frosts and their four children are exactly the kind of people S-chip was intended to help: working Americans who can’t afford private health insurance.
The parents have a combined income of about $45,000, and don’t receive health insurance from employers. When they looked into buying insurance on their own before the accident, they found that it would cost $1,200 a month — a prohibitive sum given their income. After the accident, when their children needed expensive care, they couldn’t get insurance at any price.

Fortunately, they received help from Maryland’s S-chip program. The state has relatively restrictive rules for eligibility: children must come from a family with an income under 200 percent of the poverty line. For families with four children that’s $55,220, so the Frosts clearly qualified.

Graeme Frost, then, is exactly the kind of child the program is intended to help. But that didn’t stop the right from mounting an all-out smear campaign against him and his family.
Soon after the radio address, right-wing bloggers began insisting that the Frosts must be affluent because Graeme and his sister attend private schools (they’re on scholarship), because they have a house in a neighborhood where some houses are now expensive (the Frosts bought their house for $55,000 in 1990 when the neighborhood was rundown and considered dangerous) and because Mr. Frost owns a business (it was dissolved in 1999).

You might be tempted to say that bloggers make unfounded accusations all the time. But we’re not talking about some obscure fringe. The charge was led by Michelle Malkin, who according to Technorati has the most-trafficked right-wing blog on the Internet, and in addition to blogging has a nationally syndicated column, writes for National Review and is a frequent guest on Fox News.

The attack on Graeme’s family was also quickly picked up by Rush Limbaugh, who is so important a player in the right-wing universe that he has had multiple exclusive interviews with Vice President Dick Cheney.

And G.O.P. politicians were eager to join in the smear. The New York Times reported that Republicans in Congress “were gearing up to use Graeme as evidence that Democrats have overexpanded the health program to include families wealthy enough to afford private insurance” but had “backed off” as the case fell apart.

In fact, however, Republicans had already made their first move: an e-mail message from the office of Mitch McConnell, the Senate minority leader, sent to reporters and obtained by the Web site Think Progress, repeated the smears against the Frosts and asked: “Could the Dems really have done that bad of a job vetting this family?”

And the attempt to spin the media worked, to some extent: despite reporting that has thoroughly debunked the smears, a CNN report yesterday suggested that the Democrats had made “a tactical error in holding up Graeme as their poster child,” and closely echoed the language of the e-mail from Mr. McConnell’s office.

All in all, the Graeme Frost case is a perfect illustration of the modern right-wing political machine at work, and in particular its routine reliance on character assassination in place of honest debate. If service members oppose a Republican war, they’re “phony soldiers”; if Michael J. Fox opposes Bush policy on stem cells, he’s faking his Parkinson’s symptoms; if an injured 12-year-old child makes the case for a government health insurance program, he’s a fraud.

Meanwhile, leading conservative politicians, far from trying to distance themselves from these smears, rush to embrace them. And some people in the news media are still willing to be used as patsies.

Politics aside, the Graeme Frost case demonstrates the true depth of the health care crisis: every other advanced country has universal health insurance, but in America, insurance is now out of reach for many hard-working families, even if they have incomes some might call middle-class.

And there’s one more point that should not be forgotten: ultimately, this isn’t about the Frost parents. It’s about Graeme Frost and his sister.

I don’t know about you, but I think American children who need medical care should get it, period. Even if you think adults have made bad choices — a baseless smear in the case of the Frosts, but put that on one side — only a truly vicious political movement would respond by punishing their injured children.

That last sentence should be read again:

Even if you think adults have made bad choices ... only a truly vicious political movement would respond by punishing their injured children.

I can only speak for myself, but one of my grandcheldren has been a beneficiary of Peach Care, the Georgia version of SCHIP (State Children's Health Insurance Program) and I can assure the reader that his parents were in no position to provide insured medical care otherwise. No, the were not and are not broke. They both work and have started a new business, which is finally grown enough to qualify for one of the smallest group insurance plan the industry offers.

When I read the story of the Frosts, I can relate. When my wife and I bought our first house it was a loan assumption for $30,000 in a blighted downtown neighborhood. Our family went through several years of genuine hard times. Nine years in a house with no air conditioning on an income that qualified the children for reduced-price lunches in schools. Later the income got better. Lots better. I was able to pay the max into Social Security over twenty years, but I certainly never qualified to be called a Limosine Liberal.

Oh, I tried to become a Republican. I wanted to learn to think and act like a rich man. I knew that in my position I was supposed to have a condescending attitude toward poor people and point in derision at those who making "bad choices," never pursuing higher education, slogging along at low wages, having too many children and all the rest...But I never quite got the hang of it. Too much in my own experience. Too many hard-working people I knew whose "good choices" failed to pay off. Too many years managing the working poor.

But I digress...

Here is how one group is responding to those who voted against SCHIP, failing to overcome the president's veto.

(Veto! That kind of "compassionate conservatism" you can keep. Shove it where the sun never shines.)


Here is that story from the Atlanta paper.

In an attempt to assuage fellow Democrats at home, U.S. Rep. Jim Marshall of Macon just put out this statement about why he voted against the SCHIP expansion bill on Tuesday:

“Earlier today, the House voted to extend SCHIP’s authorization until the debate over the program’s expansion is resolved. There’s no question that I support expanding SCHIP.

“But I also have an obligation to the citizens of Middle Georgia to do everything possible to make sure that the program in its final form fairly distributes the burden and fairly distributes the benefits.

“Expanding SCHIP is among my highest priorities - and it should be among everyone’s highest priorities - but it’s also critically important that Congress and the President get this right.”
Marshall was the only Democrat who didn’t vote for the bill that passed Tuesday with a less-than-veto-proof margin. We’re told that Marshall had several problems with the measure: the size and instability of the tobacco tax increase; the lack of a standard applications for every state; and a lax identification process. Marshall appears to agree with Republican Nathan Deal, who has argued the ID standards would make the program easy for illegal immigrants to abuse.

The implication being that he expects to vote for the measure when it comes up again, if his objections are satisfied.

Right.
Expects to vote "for" next time.
Just let him first get a little political mileage showing how tough he is on the sorry underclass that doesn't deserve help. Oh, and the anchor babies as well.

Be sure to read the comments...

Thanks to Libby at Cernig's place for the heads-up

I'm spreading the word.