President Bush was right to vetoe healthcare bill: Why the SCHIP

Country Boy has no tears for the S-CHIP sob story!

The Democrats and the media have been hammering President Bush for vetoing the S-CHIP (State Children’s Health Insurance Program) legislation and accusing him of robbing the poorest children of the poor healthcare.

In the Democrats efforts to gain enough support to override the veto, they found a family in Baltimore to parade in front of the media.

The Frost family has two children that were injured in a car accident three years and received care paid for by the government program S-CHIP because they supposedly could not afford Healthcare.

Graeme Frost, one of the children injured in the accident, gave the rebuttal to the veto during the Democratic radio address , written for him by Senate Democrat staffers, and made several Beltway lobbying appearances with top Dem leaders last week. (Listen to Graeme’s address here.)

Graeme describes his and his sister’s condition after the car accident. "I was in a coma for a week and couldn't eat or stand up or even talk. My sister was even worse," Graeme said. "My parents work really hard and always make sure my sister and I have everything we need, but we can't afford private health insurance."

That evil President Bush, trying to take healthcare away from these kids! Whatever will this poor family do? Well, just like with a lot of other stories there is more than meets the eye. Let’s take a look at just how poor the Frost family is and why they couldn’t afford health insurance.

In a Baltimore Sun article the family claims to be raising their four children on combined income of about $45,000 a year. "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."

What the article neglects to mention is that somehow the Frost’s are able to afford to send their children to the elite Park School, a private school were tuition is $20,000 per year, in Baltimore, MD. If you visit the Park School website there are photos of the school's 44,000 square foot Wyman Arts Center: two galleries, an outdoor ampitheater, Meyerhoff Theater, Macks-Fidler Black Box Theater, practice rooms, rehearsal space, and ceramics, 3-D sculpture, woodworking, jewelry, painting, photography, digital graphics studios, recording studio, and keyboard lab.

The Frost’s send at least two of their children to this school, (There is no proof on whether the other two Frost children attend this school or not) which means they are able to come up with 40,000 dollars a year on a 45,000 dollar salary! Is that even possible? Well here is confirmation both attended Park found here (using edit-"find on this page"-Gemma). It will take you to an article in the schools newspaper about a fundraiser for Gemma class of 16, and Graeme class of 13.

Now, I don’t care how good your budget is that just doesn’t add up. How are the Frost’s able to survive on just $5,000 of income after tuition?

Well, a little more investigating will find that Halsey Frost has owned his own company, “Frostworks,” since this marriage announcement in the NY Times in 1992. He also employed his wife as a “bookkeeper and operations management” prior to her recent 2007 hire at the “medical publishing firm.” As an owner of his own company Frost did not provide himself or his wife with health insurance.

Frostworks, is located at 3701 E BALTIMORE ST. in a building that was purchased for $160,000 in 1999. The buildings owner is listed as DIVERSIFIED INDUSTRIAL DESIGN CENTER, LLC whose mailing address is listed as 104 S Collington Ave which is the Frost's home.

The commercial property he owns is also listed as the business address for another company called Reillys Designs. This leads to the question of whether rental income is included in the above-mentioned salary total.

Here is a photo taken in the Frost’s family kitchen, which shows what appears to be a recent remodeling job with granite counter tops and glass front cabinets. It is unclear what the current market value of the Frost’s 3,040 square foot home at 104 S Collington Ave is, but the house up the street at 113 S COLLINGTON AVE, also an end unit, sold for $485,000 this past March and it was only 2,060 square feet.

So the Frost’s are able to find the time and money to remodel a home, send kids to exclusive private schools, purchase commercial property and run their own business, but they can’t find money for health insurance?

This is what the Democrats consider the poor. In fact Democrats want to tax actual working families, living in smaller houses, sending their kids to much less luxurious schools, with no commercial property ownership to pay for the Frost’s health insurance.

The SCHIP is suppose to be designed for children whose families can not afford health insurance, not families who choose to not buy health insurance to fit their life decisions.

Mr. Frost, check out www.ehealthinsurance.com for family health plans you can actually afford, even if you under-reported your income.