The recently vetoed bill which was designed to expand the Childrens Health Insurance Plan has drawn attacks from the left as being “heartless” and against the children. It has also led the Democrats to force a child into the spotlight for the sole purpose of furthering their political goals. Last week Graeme Frost who is 12 years old delivered the Democratic Radio Address. Graeme and his younger sister Gemma were seriously injured in a car accident and Graeme recounts his story explaining; “We got the help we needed because we had health insurance for us through the CHIP program.”

It is difficult to listen to the story of a 12 year old and his younger sister being seriously injured without showing remorse. Millions of Americans heard this address all feeling thankful that there was a CHIP program to help provide for the Frost family. Predictably, the MSM also latched onto the story focusing on the plight of this family and how CHIP saved the day.

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.

Surely a family with four children and a combined income of $45,000 is deserving of financial assitance, specifically for necessities like health care. This is precisely the emotional response the Democrats want Americans to feel when they listen to this “poor” child tell of his ills. Luckily we have bloggers out there who are willing to do the fact checking the mainstream media no longer wants to do. As it turns out, the Frost family is not so poor. An entry at Free Republic tells us a little more about this family.

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.

His company, Frostworks, is located at 3701 E BALTIMORE ST. 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 which leads to the question of whether rental income is included in the above mentioned salary total

The current market value of their improved 3,040 SF home at 104 S Collington Ave is unknown but 113 S COLLINGTON AVE, also an end unit, sold for $485,000 this past March and it was only 2,060 SF. A photo taken in the family’s kitchen shows what appears to be a recent remodeling job with granite counter tops and glass front cabinets

He also notes that at least 2 of the Frost children attend Park School in Baltimore MD, which has an annual tuition of $20,000 per child. This begs the question, how does the Frost family afford all of this on a combined income of $45,000 per year? Could it be possible that much of the families expenses are paid by Mr. Frosts company, allowing them to declare a low enough annual income to qualify for government handouts?

As Mark Steyn points out

Mr Frost, the “woodworker”, owns his own design company and the commercial property it operates from, part of which space he also rents out; they have a 3,000-sq-ft home on a street where a 2,000-sq-ft home recently sold for half a million dollars; he was able to afford to send two children simultaneously to a $20,000-a-year private school; his father and grandfather were successful New York designers and architects; etc. This is apparently the new definition of “working families”:

It is sad that in an effort to push an expansion of government paid health care to needy children, the only “needy” children the Democrats could find live in a 3000 square foot house and attend a $20,000 a year private school. I certainly hope that being the Frost family has decided to allow Democrats to pimp their children, the resulting attention brought on them will eventually lead the IRS to take a close look at their financials!

This is nothing new for Democrats though, Michelle Malkin reminds us that this is not the first time Democrats goofed and chose the wrong poster child:

…Jennifer’s mother wrote a widely-publicized letter to the White House. “Do you know what it is like to choose between purchasing groceries for the week to feed your family or buying needed medications for your chronically ill child?” Kathleen Bush asked. Pale and wan, young Jennifer suffered from unidentified chronic digestive problems and myriad ailments from birth. She had her gall bladder, appendix, and fragments of her intestines removed. Those organs were replaced with a tangled cable of feeding tubes that constricted Jennifer’s 43-pound frame. Surgeons threaded a catheter into the girl’s heart. After 200 hospital visits and 40 operations, the Bush family had racked up medical bills worth more than $2 million.

Puzzled doctors and nurses scratched their heads over Jennifer’s 33,000-page medical file. The media ran maudlin profiles of the family. With TV crews in tow, saintly mother and sickly child headed up to Capitol Hill to campaign for Clinton-sponsored health insurance mandates.

Politicians unquestioningly embraced the Bushes and their tale of need. Hillary cuddled with seven-year-old Jennifer for the cameras; their mugs were splashed on the pages of USA Today and newspapers across the country. Shamelessly coached, Jennifer gave the Clintons a lucky silver dollar “to bring you good luck so everyone can have good insurance.” In another pre-programmed, kiddie-sized soundbite, Jennifer dutifully told the press: “I pray every night that I can get better - and that everyone can have insurance.”

Jennifer’s mother reveled in the relentless media attention and generous outpourings of public sympathy. Dropped by the family’s health insurer, out of a job, and in allegedly dire financial straits, Mrs. Bush poignantly appealed for government relief from the burden of Jennifer’s mysterious illness. “It’s strangling us,” she told one reporter.

But who was strangling whom? Several years before Hillary deified Mrs. Bush and elevated Jennifer to poster-child stardom, suspicious medical professionals had already begun questioning the mother’s role in making her “beautiful little angel” sick. Nurses complained that Mrs. Bush was force-feeding her child with unnecessary seizure drugs that made her vomit. Independent specialists conducted extensive tests on Jennifer and found no evidence of digestive disorders. When Jennifer was separated from her mother for treatment at a Cincinnati hospital, the starved child feasted mightily on pizza, hot dogs, and chocolate bars. Meanwhile, authorities discovered that while the Bush family claimed poverty because of Jennifer’s health problems, they had splurged on trips to the Bahamas and Disney World, house remodeling, and a new Harley-Davidson motorcycle.

Dr. Eli Newberger, a professor of pediatrics at Harvard Medical School, concluded that nothing in Jennifer’s extensive records indicated “that the child has any underlying illness except the suffering she has had to endure as a result of efforts to portray her as needing urgent care.” Jennifer was removed from her family in 1996 and has been healthy ever since.

…[In February 2000], Kathleen Bush – Hillary Clinton’s once-proud and loud sister in arms — was sentenced to five years in prison on two counts of aggravated child abuse and one count of fraud. She also pled guilty to a separate count of welfare fraud for misrepresenting $60,000 in assets on Medicaid forms. “There was probably more abuse in this single case,” lead prosecutor Bob Nichols noted, “than in all of the child-abuse cases I’ve prosecuted in my life combined.”

Mrs. Bush’s behavior is an extreme example of the Nanny State opportunism to which Hillary Clinton has dedicated her life. It’s enough to make you sick.

Stop The ACLU has a roundup from the blogsphere.

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Dumb Dems, Health Care, Politics