Anyone who touches base anywhere else but these our humble blogo-lodgings – a dauntingly high percentage, I intuit – will probably have read about the Graeme Frost thing.
Beginning at the beginning, the President vetoed a continuation of the popular State Children’s Health Insurance Program, or SCHIP. Congress had voted not just to continue the program – which seeks to throw a safety net under those too hard-working or otherwise successful to be covered by Medicare but too poor to afford private health care, but also to extend it to families at up to 300% of the poverty level from the previous 200% threshold. For a family of four, that would mean benefits would now accrue to those earning around $62,000 per year.
“When they start talking about the children,” fiscal conservatives tend to warn, “it’s time to put your hand on your wallet.” And while it’s always politically difficult to come out against anything marketed towards “the children,” this President’s death bed lame duck conversion to the benefits of fiscal discipline makes his newfound restraint all the more conspicuous. Conspicuous as in the sense of, “out there all by yourself on the ridgeline with fires inbound” conspicuous.
Using the time-honored tradition of arguing from the heart-rending specific to the massively expensive general, proponents of SCHIP extension trotted out young Graeme Frost, a 12-year old boy who’d suffered terrible injuries in an automobile accident, and whose recovery was financed largely through SCHIP funding. It didn’t take too terribly long before someone on the other side of the issue discovered what appeared at first blush to be damning evidence that the Frosts ought not to have been covered by SCHIP at all: A large suburban house in a relatively wealthy neighborhood, expensive tuitions to private schools, a rich investment in commercial property, and so on.
Quickly – far too quickly – this went from an attack upon those who would cynically use children in the construction of their plaster saints to a full throated condemnation of the kind of no-load parents who saddle the general public with the consequences of their poorly considered personal choices. Lost in the fever of the latest Swiftboat-Rathergate-Beauchamp denunciation competition (noble causes all, by the way) was any consideration of those children unlucky enough to suffer the combined affliction of marginally employed parents and personal mischance.
I mean, it was a 12-year old kid, for God’s sake. Just because your opponent hides behind children doesn’t mean you have to shoot them first. And we’re so over that “sins of the father” thing. Or ought to be, anyway.
But who listens to me? So it came to pass that these intemperate volleys received nearly immediately counter-batter fire from those who reply – with cause, it seems – that huggable or not, the Frosts were exactly the sort of people whose children the SCHIP bill was intended to cover. Furthermore, it was asserted that those right wing critics who went snooping about the Frost neighborhood were not just hard-hearted but kind of creepy.
At which point the dialogue became unmoored from rational consideration of the issue itself and attached itself instead to the personalities swirling around it. Ugly.
The questions a responsible public ought to be asking itself are not really what the Frosts earned on their income tax returns, nor whether blogstalkers ought or ought not to have published Malkin’s address, but rather what kind of health care system should the country have in place – market driven, statist/bureacratic, or some red-haired hybrid.
As ever when dealing with the federal bureaucracy, each new bill comes with a law of unintended consequences rider: Part of the reason that proponents want to extend SCHIP coverage to higher wage earners is that employers have increasingly abandoned coverage to working people between 200-300% of the poverty level. But the President’s advisors have rightly pointed out that increased federal subsidies to state health insurance programs has the effect of reducing the size of general base contributing to private health insurance. Fewer contributors share more of the risk, raising the price of premiums for those left in the system – a vicious and reinforcing cycle that crowds private health care out of the market, leaving us with ever more uninsured children even before we get around to talking about parents who can’t be bothered to find work that comes with health care benefits. Eventually – and probably more quickly than most people realize – only the hyper-rich will be able to afford private health care, and then only until they get hit up with the bill for paying the public cost for insuring the rest of us. Because if you think health care is expensive now, just wait until you see how much it costs when it’s free.
It may be that we collectively decide to move towards a single-payer health care scheme, with the warm embrace of the federal bureaucracy wrapped firmly around one-seventh of our national economy. It may be that we decide to trade market efficiencies and personal freedoms for a more general fairness. But if we do make that choice, then it ought to be a deliberate decision that we walk into with our eyes wide open, aware of what we are gaining and what we are trading away – not one that we sidle into crabwise.
And no matter which way we go, we ought to leave the children out of it. All of us.
In all the arguments i’ve read that have been critical of the Dems use of this family, i really have yet to read one that has attacked the kid himself. Yes, they have been quite critical of the family and their choices; after all, isn’t that a big point of the whole health care debate?
It can be reasonably argued that a family that has the wherewithall to invest in property might be able to also invest in insurance for their kids. Shouldn’t they be open to criticism over their choice to have property rather than a safety net for their family? Isn’t that just a bit irresponsible?
The ONLY reason this particular family has been criticised is because they CHOSE to be the poster family for the issue. As soon as you stand up on the national stage as the *perfect example*, you have no right to cry foul when others question your motives and choices. It sucks for the kids, but you know what sucks worse? That they have parents who choose property over their health.
Another excellent point in this debate is this perfect example of how libs/dems hold up kids, grieving mothers/wives, the odd liberal veteran, etc, etc. as advocates for their policies, then claim the rest of us (in some cases, the majority of us) have no moral right to question them. It’s a BS tactic and it needs to stop.
Have you heard the one about the scorpion and the frog?
You can scarcely blame them, it’s in their nature. They’re on the correct side of things you see, and any tactic which achieves the desired end is inherently good, especially personalizing policy rather than arguing it on rational merits or on a cost/benefit or affordability basis.
Even better if the opposition walks right into it face first. Make no mistake, those who publish overhead imagery of Malkin’s home are not outraged at her transgressions. They are overjoyed.
Firstly, I think using a 12-year-old for a rebuttal for the Dems to the President’s radio address is child abuse. It’s despicable.
Secondly, the more I think about health insurance as well as employees, the more I think it needs to be untied from employers. If all employers withdrew health insurance, it would be an unholy mess for a while, but individuals would probably end up better off because they could purchase insurance that would meet their needs better than the one-size-fits-all plan most employers provide. Especially if employers gave the money they contribute to insurance to employees.
I would predict a boon to the insurance companies as well as individuals, plus people would be able to vote with their feet if they didn’t like the insurance they got — ability to change companies and options as life changes would become more important. I think it would also help put the price tag back into medicine — no one pays attention to how much health care costs and this would bring pricing back into the considerations of consumers.
As I said, it would be a mess for a while, but I would predict better options in the long run, if not better coverage.
Shipmates,
I offer up AW1 Tim’s 2-point plan for reducing health care costs. It’s not a panacea, mind you, but I believe it to be a start.
Point 1: Nationalise Medical Schools. The single greatest expense for any newly minted doctor or nurse is repaying their student loans. By nationalising the Medical Schools, the student gets a free education. Now, the monetary costs may be gone, but we recoup them somewhat by attaching a 5-year service obligation to the degree. You graduate, then you serve where we tell you to for the next 5 years. After that, you are free to go into private practice wherever you like.
Point 2: Torte reform. Lawsuits against medical practitioners are capped to actual costs recovery, with legal expenses capped as well. Egregious actions by medical practitioners are referred to criminal courts for adjudication. Malpractice liability insurance is the single greatest expense for all portions of the health care industry. Cap those costs and you all at once drive down medical expenses, and reduce wholesale lawsuits for monetary compensation.
Other’s mileage, of course, may vary…..
So if I am injured in a car accident I can sue for pain and suffering. But not so if injured from medical malpratice?
Just curious.
Michelle – yes you can sue for medical malpractice.
For me this was about the Dems not vetting their poster family. The family can make any decisions it wants about their lives – whether we agree with them or not.
And lest we forget, the Dems couldn’t have used Graeme Frost if his parents didn’t agree to it.
Well if it’s children we’re all worked up about and government’s the answer, then, hell, let’s nationalize the children and get this egalitarian circus on the road. When I think of all the sleepless nights I could have avoided, I could just spit.
I have only one quibble against you here, Lex. Arguing from the specific to the general, AKA inductive reasoning, AKA *SCIENCE*, is pretty much what gave us Western Civ.
Yah, I know, you can’t be certain, new data may overturn yer theory at any time, etc.
.
JTG, I’m not sure that’s science. Science involves running checks on the reasoning that you’ve achieved from induction, not assuming that inductive logic is true. Inductive reasoning in science is what gave us the aether and the steadfast believe that both Newton and later, Einstien were completely right. Science is mostly a deductive sport.
Engineering on the other hand…
Back onto the topic: My parents sacrificed a good deal of coin in order to give me, at 6.75 months at birth, a snowball’s chance in (a warm place of the reader’s choosing) of not being blind/mentally disabled/dead.
Had it been a single payer system they would not have had to pay. I would be dead, the point would be moot. If it weren’t for those fun drugs and techniques financed by private medicine, my situation would have been drastically changed. This is why no one in my family supports it (among other reasons).
From what it seems, the family in question wants someone else to pay for the fact that life is unfair. The evidence points to an ablity to pay, but not the willingness to pay. Typical mentality of the leftest.
Yah, Geo, I hear ya. Show up for militia muster with own weapon, ruck, boots, etc., or you don’t get to vote. The Founders got it right the first time.
P.s. I’m older than 50. Can I show up with a pistol, and sneakers, and still get to vote?
Minor nit. That should be “expensive tuitions to private schools”, not “expensive tuitions to public schools”
JTG: Wasn’t trying to make a reference to that, guess it just seeped in. According to how its set up, as long as you are capable of doing something for the militia, then sure.
Let’s just get it decided once and for all so I can get on the frikkin’ gravy train and stop being one of the few asses pulling it.
although the phrase “provide for the common weal” springs to mind, and some aspects of this situation could concievably be construed to fall in under that general category heading, i doubt the Framer’s intent was to “provide, completely” as much as to “provide and foster a framework / system under which citizens and states and corporate entities and congregations and/or others can take what measures they feel would promote the common weal without hindrance from the Fed.”
that’s my take on it.
Think many incl me agree w/ you MajMike, but folks advocating against do not give a hoot about the “Framer’s intent” in this and other contested issues. Lex previously mentioned “Defenders & Builders” – it appears that these “builders” see existing “gates” as obstacles to be destroyed before new (re)construction and never consider why gates were considered prudent to erect in the first place.
H/T: GKC
Mike, you stole my thunder. I should think that the best thing that could possibly be done, “for the children”, is to hand down to them a constitutional republic with a sound dollar. That’s not what they’re in line to get at the moment.
While I have strong opinions on the program as well as the use of the Frost familiy and the abuse of the Frost children which I will avoid here as there has been good discussion to this point. It should be noted but rarely is, that the president proposed to expand the program to cover an additional 3 MILLION children, dems wanted to double to 18 million. It should also be noted that under the Presidents proposal the Frost family would STILL be covered.
Dave