HEALTHCARE FOLLOW UP

On the heals of my last blog regarding healthcare, I thought it was important to follow up with President's Bush's veto of the SCHIP program last week. To me, there is no better argument as to why we need a change of party leadership in Washington than the story of the Frost Family, outlined in TIME Magazine (below) and the realization that this administration AND THE REPUBLICAN PARTY have their priorities all wrong.

The State Children's Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) was created in 1997 (under Clinton) to help states insure children. This program authorizes states t provide health care coverage to low income children not eligible for medicaid and who are uninsured.  After this bill passed in 1997, it reduced the number of uninsured children in the U.S. by one third. But over the last few years, the number has crept back up again, 12% of all American children are not insured. This is due primarily to increased costs and employers not offering insurance to save money.

On Oct 3, the bill came up for renewal, it was supported by both parties and passed through both the House and Senate. The bill that congress passed was to bring the total spending up $35 billion to $60 billion over the next five years to help, once again, reduce the number of uninsured American children. Then, when it got to President Bush - he vetoed it. The reason Bush gave for the veto "I believe in private medicine, I don't want the federal government making decisions for doctors and customers." He also said that this would "lead the country down the dangerous road of nationalized healthcare".

Of course what he fails to mention is that private insurance companies - not doctors or customers - are making the medical decisions; and, more and more, are denying coverage.

Now, Nancy Pelosi and the Democratic Congress will have to persuade more republicans to join with them to override the President's veto. If they cannot do this, they will try to pass a new bill.

Politics being politics - let's now segway into this article that appeared on Wed in TIME MAGAZINE:

"If you listen closely to the two-minute radio address that 12-year-old Graeme Frost delivered last week for the Democrats, you can hear the lingering effects of the 2004 car crash that put him into a coma for a week and left one of his vocal cords paralyzed. "Most kids my age probably haven't heard of CHIP, the Children's Health Insurance Program," he says in a voice that sounds weak and stressed. "But I know all about it, because if it weren't for CHIP, I might not be here today."

Graeme, whose sister suffered worse brain injuries when their family SUV hit a patch of black ice, was making an appeal for President Bush to reconsider his veto of legislation that would have expanded the program designed to provide health coverage to children of the working poor -- those who are too rich to qualify for Medicaid but unable to afford private insurance.

Since then, Frost and his family have been introduced firsthand to something else that most kids his age haven't: the reality of how brutal partisan politics can be in the Internet age. It started over the weekend, when a blogger calling himself Icwhatudo put up a post on the conservative website FreeRepublic.com noting what he had found by scavenging around the Internet: that Graeme attends a private school, lives in a remodeled house near one that had sold for $485,000 in March and is the child of parents whose wedding was announced in the New York Times. The post also noted that his father purchased a $160,000 commercial space in 1999.

"One has to wonder that if time and money can be found to remodel a home, send kids to exclusive private schools, purchase commercial property and run your own business... maybe money can be found for other things," the blogger wrote. "Maybe Dad should drop his woodworking hobby and get a real job that offers health insurance rather than making people like me (also with 4 kids in a 600sf smaller house and tuition $16,000 less per kid and no commercial property ownership) pay for it in my taxes."

That was just the beginning of what turned into a Category 5 hurricane on the blogosphere. Typical of the tone was what Mark Steyn wrote on National Review Online: "Bad things happen to good people, and they cause financial problems and tough choices. But, if this is the face of the 'needy' in America, then no one is not needy." Nameless commenters to conservative blogs were even harsher. "Let 'em twist in the wind and be eaten by ravens," wrote one one on Redstate.com, who was quoted in the Baltimore Sun. "Then maybe the bunch of socialist patsies will think twice."

It turns out, however, that not everything about the Frosts' life pops up on a Google search. While Graeme does attend a private school, he does so on scholarship. Halsey Frost is a self-employed woodworker; he and his wife say they earn between $45,000 and $50,000 a year to provide for their family of six. Their 1936 rowhouse was purchased in 1990 for $55,000. It was vacant and in a run-down neighborhood that has improved since then, in part because of people like themselves who took a chance. It is now assessed at $263,140, though under state law the value of that asset is not taken into account in determining their eligibility for SCHIP. And while they are still uninsured, they claim it is most certainly not by choice. Bonnie Frost says the last time she priced health coverage, she learned it would cost them $1,200 a month.

In short, just as the radio spot claimed, the Frosts are precisely the kind of people that the SCHIP program was intended to help.

While the family continues to support the vetoed bill that would expand the program to 4 million more children, they are hoping to remove themselves from the middle of the storm. After giving a few interviews, Halsey and Bonnie Frost now say they don't want to say anything more, though network camera crews have planted themselves in front of their house.

Halsey did have this to say in an e-mail to me:

"My son Graeme has helped put on a human face, that of a young boy, representing the needs of children and families across this nation. We are a hard working family that has stepped forward to support SCHIP. Mudslinging from the fringe has now been directed at the messenger. To be smeared all over the Internet and receive nasty e-mail -- my family does not deserve this retribution. It is both shameful and pathetic.

"Driven by a most dubious agenda, shortsighted cut-and-paste bloggers, lacking all the facts, have made a feeble attempt at being crack reporters. This is an aberrant attempt to distract the American people from what the real issues are. Hard working American families need affordable health insurance.

"I find it morally reprehensible, and the act of a true coward, to publicly (world wide) smear a man and his family and not sign one's own real name to what they have written. I sign my name to what I write.

-Halsey Frost"

Here's what the Republican Presidential Candidates had to say about the SCHIP Program and Bush's veto of it:

Rudy Giuliani called the plan "socialized medicine." In July, Rudy Giuliani told CNBC that "you have to veto it."

Mitt Romney: When Romney was asked whether he'd support President Bush's veto of the popular health insurance program for poor children, he state: "Yeah. Yeah, I sure would." And used a page from President Bush's failed playbook, saying that we need to rely on the "private market" to take care of this. 

Fred Thompson: Fred Thompson has a history of holding extreme positions on children's health care. He was one of two Senators to oppose an amendment that would ensure that $16 billion of the budget would be spent over five years to provide health insurance for up to five million low-income children. In 1997, he voted against the SCHIP program.

John McCain: voted against extending the bipartisan effort which has sent more than six million kids from low income families to the doctor, cutting the number of uninsured children by one-third. He argued on the Senate floor that the program covered too many uninsured children. In both 1995 and 1997, McCain voted against children's healthcare for low-income children.

I will end this blog with Hillary Clinton's own words:

"It pains me that in our country we have 9 million children without health insurance and now we have a President who doesn't think they need health insurance. I thought I'd seen the depth of political partisanship and mean spiritedness but the Republicans and their right wing allies have really taken the cake this time.

There was a young boy who was 12 years old named Graeme Frost. He was in a bad car accident and he didn't have health insurance but thankfully he had a program that I helped start in 1997 with Ted Kennedy and others called SCHIP. So Graeme was able to get health care, good health care, that made a tremendous difference in the outcome of his injuries. So when the President vetoed the extension of SCHIP, Graeme and his family stepped forward to illustrate why it was so important....

And boy the whole Republican and right wing attack machine went into overdrive. And they said 'well, they have a house' - yeah, I guess they could sell their house to give their child insurance.

I don't mind if they pick on me. They've done it for years. I think I've proven I can take care of myself. But George Bush and the Republicans should lay off Graeme Frost and all the other millions of American children getting their insurance from SCHIP."

Hillary is right. America needs to pay attention to the swiftboating, right-wing, attack machines. They have labels and sound bites for everything, today their favorite is "socialized medicine". I'm sure they will soon be calling medicare and social security "communism".

But how can they really ask any sane American for their support when they are spending $12 billion dollars a month on a war that's killing thousands of innocent people, but they can't find $60 billion over 5 years to save American Children's lives?

Where's the "right to lifers" on this one? Do all possible to save the fetus, but once it gets here and actually becomes a human - don't insure it?

Not only do the Republicans stand against providing health care to children, they continue to go to great lengths to intimidate those that disagree with them.

It's time for America to WAKE UP and vote - you can make a difference.