SteynOnline

It's for the kids: the caring left responds to Mark’s comments on the Frosts: Brother can you spare a Chip? and Frosty reception.

THE MORON RIGHT
I wish I could still get seriously angry with guys like you and the rest of the moron right which has "ruled" since they stole the 2000 prez election with the help of the GOP Supreme Court. I am long past anger. But now that the writing is on the wall and you guys are more dead than the '70s, all the squeaks and squeals of your usual twisted-hate, freak-think are like so many dandelions popping up on your weedy graves.
 
Rage on, MacBeth. Please keep the advertising going. By now only about 90% of the American people realize what ignorant hateful jerks the right wing has become. There's still a bit over a year for you to prove to the remaining 10% what true a-holes you are. Keep picking on kids and claiming they deserved it. You don't live in my America. You live in your frenzied Neo Nazi imagination with the rest of the pea brained right wing.
 
Geez zuss. You guys truly have the intelligence of puke on a stick. Good bye. Rest in peace. Go away and die. Please. Go fight in Iraq with Blackwater.

C T Walsh

THE OPPORTUNITY TO BE RESPONSIBLE
Mark - You couldn't be more correct in your analysis. Bad things happen to good people who are obligated to solve their own problems. I would love to own a small chocolate shop; but with a disabled daughter (Muscular Dystrophy), I instead use my engineering degrees to go to work every day at a large corporation to earn a significant salary and good health benefits. My choice, my responsibility to make sure I can support my family no matter what our circumstances are. In no way does the government or any American taxpayer have a responsibility to support my family
so I can go off and "do my thing."? Jobs are not about making us feel good; they are about personal accountability.

For those fortunate enough not to have high medical costs, great!? For me, I'm thankful to be living in a country where I have the opportunity to work hard and provide my family with our particular necessities.

Lynn O'Meara

DO OR DARE
HOW DARE YOU ATTACK SICK CHILDREN????!!! 

Richard Gonzales

MARK REPLIES: HOW DARE YOU USE THE CAPS LOCK AND MULTIPLE QUESTION MARKS AND EXCLAMATIONS????????!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

MY STORY
I guess you've never been sick or always worked for a large company. If you have time to read it here is some of my story.

I have been self employed for most of my last 30 years.  I am sixty years old now.  I am type two diabetic, high blood pressure and high cholesterol.  There is no way I can afford insurance (~1600/mo w/ hi deduc.) If I were a millionaire it would be different.

 My primary beef right now is that I have no leverage and cannot get my doctor's charges reduced to what the insurance company's will pay.    When I walk into a new doctor's office, they send me a bill that no insurance company will pay. In this latest case I saw a Dr. Moore for high blood sugar.  I brought all of my recent lab tests. He looked at my feet, chest and back in a ten minute visit, ordered no tests, gave me a sample medicine, said "let's see what this will do,"  and sent me on my way.

I paid $150 at the counter before my visit.  Two weeks later I received  another bill for $228.  No insurance company will pay $378 for a ten minute office visit like that. But this doctor has continued to try to collect this and will probably send me to collections because I don't have the clout of an insurance company.

You are a damn fool to be defending the current state of affairs.

Doug Hacker

IT STINKS OF FRAUD
I don't know much about the Frost family directly, but I do know the DC/Baltimore area, and the situation stinks of fraud.  The family was allegedly making a combined 45-50K with a family business in woodworking during a time when the Baltimore/DC housing market was rocketing out of sight and everybody and their brother was rehabbing a house, and the big builders were building like crazy.  It just doesn't make sense.  Even if their kids had scholarships to their private school and even if the family home had been purchased cheaply before Baltimore was trendy,  the current combined income only makes sense if they used to make twice as much money (say 2002-2004) or if they are hiding half their income. Anyone who has watched the DC/Baltimore housing market would agree with me.

Don’t use my name, but feel free to quote me

YOUR MISERABLE LIFE MARRED BY HATRED
If a political party is desperate enough to send a general to do a man's job, then the general is fair game.

See what I did there? If I was a religious person I would pray for your poor soul, but the sad thing about being an atheist is knowing that you will suffer absolutely no punishment for your actions in an afterlife. I can only hope that you will one day be an old man looking back on a miserable life marred by hatred of your fellow man and you will realize what a waste it has been. But that would require an amount of decency that I doubt you'll ever obtain.

Mike Pedersen
Copenhagen, Denmark

FREE EXPRESSION
You gotta be kidding right?

You really are a thoughtless asshole.

Ken Meeuwse

IT’S ABOUT POWER
A lot of things slip into place when you realize that entitlements are not about making sure the poor and temporarily needy are taken care of.

It's about power.

It's about maximizing the dependency of Americans on the State so the State becomes
indispensable.  Unfortunately for the statists, as you point out, there aren't enough poor and needy to generate the real power they want.  So one way or another they have to start dragging in the vast majority of people who are doing all right caring for themselves.

This is what "universal health care" is about, not providing care for the uninsured.  Or "expanding" SCHIP or Medicare.

If you want to gauge a liberal politician's real motives when a major new entitlement is proposed, ask them about "means-testing."  Making sure only those who need the benefit get it.  If they are stridently opposed to it ("we don't want this to look like welfare!") then you have them nailed.

It's no coincidence that Social Security and Medicare effectively enslave the most reliable voting demographic to the government.  The Democratic dream is to have everyone in this boat.  That there is no way then to pay for it is irrelevant.  Down deep, Democrats have never believed in economics and economic laws, and they're not about to start now.

Tom Brosz

MORE LIBERAL….
Hi pussy
 
I am a liberal.  That means you can kick my ass, right?  How can  I get together with you so I can give you an opportunity to do so?
 
A Tree Hugger
(J Bischoff)

SMUG
You can always find a reason not to help and feel smug about it

Robert Hurley

THE HIGHEST INCOME IN THE COUNTRY
$45,000 combined income a year in Maryland???

Loved the story from "the corner" about the 12 year old boy from Maryland who is in "dire" need of federally funded health care. My first reaction even before reading the comments by "icwhatudo" at Free Republic was, as a former Marylander, how anyone in the state of Maryland could earn a "combined" income of a mere $45,000 a year? Garbage haulers in Maryland make more than that! Currently, Marylanders have the highest income in the country.

Did it occur to the media that some of us aren't so stupid as to fail to question such a grossly underestimated income for a wealthy state like Maryland? Thank God for Bloggers!!

Mark Spinelli
Chicago, Illinois

UNDERWHELMED
I have been a medical office/insurance biller for a hospital, a 35 unit clinic system and a customer service representative for one of the larger Blues.

I and my wife recently sold our home to cover medical expenses incurred after I had a heart attack and quadruple by-pass surgery and that was after our health insurance paid the majority of costs.

So you can understand why I'm a bit underwhelmed at their story.

However, the reason I'm writing is the fact that their story just doesn't add up and unfortunately you'll never get the true story because every one involved will cite medical confidentiality rules, but here's the gist: No medical insurance, public or private will under any circumstances cover
medical bills for third party liability related services as long as there is other coverage available.

If you fall in a store or have a car accident then someone else is liable, only if and until all medical coverage (ie a settlement or in the case of car insurance Personal Injury Protection or PIP) is exhausted will an insurer pay under an insurance plan.

There are apparently seven managed care/capitated plans available to medicaid eligible in Maryland and if the Frost's didn't claim their PIP coverage one of those companies soon will be.

It's something I saw over and over from both sides, the causes are (usually) ignorance, but many times are borderline fraud.

Over and over I was told by people wondering why we denied a claim due to third party liability that they didn't submit auto accident claims to their auto insurance because their premiums would go up.

I also had a number of folks call up furious when they were being sent to collections by the hospital after the hospital had to refund insurance companies monies paid incorrectly and AFTER the patients had received settlement monies for accidents and they simply refused to pay thinking that money was "theirs".

It doesn't surprise me that the dem operatives delegated the job of trolling for victims wouldn't know all this, few people do until it happens to them.

And it doesn't really surprise me (although in this case it should surprise some of them) that they thought this family was typical and qualified for poster child status in their never ending cause of socializing medicine.

“JP”SCHIP OF FOOLS
I've never written you before, so first things first: Thanks so much for your wonderfully fun and funny style of educating us out here in readerland.

Second, I'm so glad to see folks are going after that astonishingly pathetic SCHIP story in the Baltimore Sun. Reading it made me quite depressed for the state of journalism, but now your post inspires me to pile on. Can you imagine a world in which a reporter actually took the time to understand what Republicans are saying? In that world, maybe he'd have asked this woman one or two of these questions in addition to the questions taken from the Dem talking points.

(1) When someone gets their health insurance through their job, neither the company nor the employee pay any taxes on the income that goes toward that paying the premiums. But when you and your husband, who can't get policies through work, shop for health insurance,  you're obligated to pay with post-tax dollars. Do you think that's fair?

(2) Are you aware that government regulations force the health insurance industry to operate under complex rules that are much more  restrictive and aggressive than the rules for car insurance and homeowners insurance? A lot of experts think these rules make it a lot harder for families like yours to find policies that fit both theirs needs and their budget. Do you think the health insurance marketplace should be allowed to work the same way that markets for other comparable kinds of insurance do?

(3) What should the future of SCHIP be? Let me describe the two options on the table right now, and then maybe we can discuss them.
(a) Under one, the federal government will require states to redouble their efforts to deliver this program to the families that need it most, ones that aren't poor enough to qualify for Medicaid, but 
aren't that far above poor, either. Did you know that right now Maryland is nowhere close to reaching the goal of this proposal - enrolling fully 95 percent of the families that need help the most?

(b) Under the other, SCHIP will get a massive funding increase so that states can open up the program to families that make a whole lot more money than the ones the law was intended to help in the first place--families making $60,000, $70,000 a year, maybe more in some  states. Supporters of this option are adamantly opposed to any rule requiring that states prove they've actually signed up the families that need help the most before they start to expanding it to richer  families.

Hey, I can dream, can't I?

Jim

WHEN YOU HAVE YOUR HEART ATTACK
I've never read your column before but am intrigued by your outrage. You are shocked that the Dems use a child to illustrate a point. Of course snowflake children are OK because they merely served as a backdrop to support a veto.

More important, what do you think about the fact that these people actually deserved to have SCHIP? What makes them fair game to have Michelle Malkin come to their house, to the father's place of work?

What is the difference between the "socialized medicine" of SCHIP and that of the VA medical system, of giving money to Medicare HMO's to make them competitive with Medicare?
I'd like to see you make a choice of care when you have your heart attack. Gee, what doc gives the best service for the money? Let's let The Market work it all out; have 100 different companies competing and have our educated, medically sophisticated health care "consumers" chose among plans and doctors.

I'm an ER physician and you should spend some time in my (or any) ER. See the ruined lives of people with no money and shit care. In fact, why don't you come to my ER and let's have a "talk" about the selfish, arrogant policies that are fucking our country over; the disgraceful, hypocritical
mindset on the Right that allows Bill Frist to say he can diagnose Terri Schiavo from a video, that allows Larry Craig to think anyone with a brain would believe that he just has a "wide stance". The whole self-loathing faggot brigade in the GOP demonizing gays. I think that the best thing your moronic President has done for this country is show the total bankruptcy of the neo-con agenda. Keep up your nasty, hateful diatribes as the Republicans in Congress continue to drop
out, your presidential candidates run campaigns that sound as if they have had their heads up the asses of deluded Christian conservatives for the last 50 years and your mean-spirited party goes down in flames next year. Maybe then you fascist swine will get a bit of insight about how much you have fucked this country.

Kenneth Weinberg MD
NYC

MARK REPLIES: Thanks for sharing, but you're the one who seems to be "outraged" - shit, fucking, faggot, asses, fascist, blah blah blah. I only hope, for the sake of your patients, you don't read my column just before going into the operating theater. As for the invitation to come to your ER and have a "talk", what's with the quote marks? Are you some scalpel-wielding Laurence Olivier and I'm Dustin Hoffman?

ANOTHER COUNTRY
I don't understand all of this because I am Canadian.  If I was practicing accounting in the US, would part of my job be to ensure that my clients were able to receive the maximum benefits available?  If I cost the parents their SCHIP eligibility by not keeping the income in the corporation, could I be sued?  Thus I would set things up to minimize their income so they would qualify for these programs, assuming that there was no 'look through' provision that included
undistributed corporate income.

Instead of increasing the funding, should not the government be including additional
tests to ensure that the wealthy do not qualify by using the corporate veil to minimize their income.  Here in the wealthiest city in Canada, I know only the wealthiest send their children to expensive private schools.  Obviously these people have planned it so they qualify for SCHIP, thus they have funds left over for private school and new Volvo's.

It would be interesting to find out what the parents do for health insurance.  I'd also like to know if they write off the Volvo and home renovations through the corporation.

Dan Bergen
Calgary, Alberta

HMMM
you are a f**kin' moron. and probably queer too!

Ed Funkhouser

BOTTOM LINE
Never heard of you prior to this mornings op-ed piece by E.J. Dionne, you were quoted as saying, "If a political party is desperate enough to send a boy to do a man's job, then the boy is fair game." Perhaps you could remove your head from your anus, a little oxygen might do the brain well.

Peter Van Dyk

MARK REPLIES: I think we may have to offer a prize for the first letter from a Democrat that doesn't reference my bottom.

WE REFUSE SCHIP
Per my subject line, here's something I can't figure out.  When were the Frost kids first enrolled in SCHIP?  The record seems unclear on this.  If they were on SCHIP at the time of the car accident, then the Frosts' situation after the accident is not particularly relevant, despite the left's hollering about picking on "sick kids."

I think most people would be sympathetic to a family with few liquid assets signing up for temporary help after a debilitating accident.  But if the same family had de-prioritized health insurance (to the tune of letting the government pick up the bill) before the accident, is this the kind of "model family" the Democrats want to hold up as the type of family SCHIP ought to "be there" for?

Anyway, I just wanted to focus on the situation pre-accident, because if in fact the Frost kids were covered by SCHIP at the time of the accident - rather than SCHIP helping out in a time of need - that fact should be used to defang the arguments of people who are accusing Republicans of
"attacking" the Frosts.

I'm sure you could phrase all this much more prettily.

Thanks for staying on the case!

Name withheld
Austin, Texas

p.s. my family actually qualifies for SCHIP, but we refuse to enroll our kids, even though it might mean I could take part-time work instead of working fulltime (and thus be home with the kids more).  I was raised to believe that government help is a LAST resort designed for those who have no other option, not a means of subsidizing light work schedules and kitchen remodels.....

OLD MR BADGER
Any "profession" that can produce writers who accuse Jimmy Carter of anti-semitism certainly can produce pundits like you who  badger 12-year-olds. Congratulations! But remember children at age 12 are vulnerable to vituperative essays like yours, and despite the nursery  rhyme "sticks and stones......" words can harm sensitive people  especially those recovering from serious injuries, even to the point  of depression & suicide. Your column is not free speech but license!  

James Butt

SICK KID TRICK
Trot out the sick kid. In the completely non-cynical world of politics this time honored move should be called the "Tiny Tim".

Works every time.

Mike (heartless bastid) Messina
Aptos, California

IT’S A SIN
You are aware that the Frost family only pays $500 tuition per child a year, aren’t you? The ‘Park School’ has a ‘Financial Assistance Program’ for families earning up to $160,000 a year.

As the schools website points out: “In 2007, 18% of Park students in grades 1-12 received over $2 million in financial assistance that ranged from $1,000 per year to full tuition. Tuition remission for children of our faculty brings that total to 25% of the student body.”

I look forward to reading your update to your article regarding this, as to correct any misunderstanding your readers may have regarding the Frost family.

It is bad enough that they had to endure harassment from the repeated phone calls made to their home, to slander them further is a sin.

Kuni Leml

WHY I’M NOT A DEM
So Mr. Frost employs Mr. and Mrs. Frost and their income is only $45,000 per year? That sounds a little shady to me.  If I were in the IRS I would have to investigate this straight away.  Assuming that Mr. Frost's company is an S-Corp he is able to put himself on a very limited salary then extract the remainder of his company's profits out of the corporation as distributions.  These distributions are taxable just as is his salary.  However, no FICA or Medicaid, etc. is taken out of the distribution while about 15% is withheld from his salary to pay for these.  Therefore, if his company takes in $200,000 and he pays he and his wife $45,000 then they are only paying $6750 in FICA, etc. instead of the nearly $30,000 that they would have to pay if each drew a salary of $100,000 (there's a cap, of course but it is close enough to 100K to be negligible.)  For S-Corps the salary should at least be in the ballpark of actual necessity.

So, not only do we learn that the Frosts are wanting the rest of us working stiffs to pay for their health insurance but we, also, find out that they are not willing to even pay their fair share of social security.

Another reason why I'm not a Democrat.

John T. Smith
Orlando, Florida

CRUSHED TEDDIES
It's sad, you face being crushed in the next election and all you can do is attack a kid.

It's sad to see the party of Teddy, Ike, and others reduced to this.

Attack the ideas with your ideas, and leave the kid out of it.

Michael Jardeen

JUDGEMENT IN THE NEXT LIFE FOR YOU
Subject: all you people with real money are encouraging us poor people/middle class to take care of our children, but the fact of the matter is that that care is so expensive that most
people like me can't have it and heat the house and buy food. It is disturbing that on the one hand conservatives say get rich buy things live on credit (and I know that some conservatives don't say that, but Dick Cheney said deficits don't matter and most people agre with that because
tomorrow is a long way off). But you want us to spend money so the rich can have their profits, but then you say we dont' care about our kids because we've spent our money on living the life of a middle class american. Yes, this  is a muddled view, but it was created by you guys. I don't expectthe government to take care of me, but I also know that I can't really afford medical care. The average office visit is three hundred dollars in this neck of the woods. So how often can you take your kid to the doctor if you don't have insurance? Rarely. And insurance is four or five hundred a month at best for poor insurance that doesn't pay for everything.

 I don't think you should judge other people's financial realities without having lived them. And to say that that poor family didn't put their kids first is a wretched thing. It's why people look at the rightwing and see nasty jerks. I guess maybe you are.

But I know there will be a judgement on you when you pass into the next life. Enjoy.

Tim Osburn

MARK WRITES: So it was Dick Cheney who made them buy those expensive cars?

NO CASE
I have been a reader of the National Review for quite a while. But I can't deny that the Dailykos rebuttal to your argument against the 12 year old kid have convinced me that you have no case.

A Perez

MORE ELOQUENCE
Asshole . . .

Russell Lee
www.feedbackconsulting.biz

IT’S FOR THE KIDS
Little children are fair game?

Go f**k yourself, you f**king pig.

L Racicot

NOT AT ALL
Re. your post on the new poor:  Hope you don't mind me wasting your bandwidth just to say "Bravo!"

Roger C. Shouse
Pennsylania

LAME DEFENSE
Look, you, and others, jumped on the "kid" story without doing your homework and you jumped to conclusions that proved to be false.  Don't compound the mistake by trying to slip out with "the Frosts are a very particular situation and do not illustrate any social generality".  That would have made a good argument before, but it makes a pretty lame defense now.  Just admit you were wrong and leave it there. 

Sometimes you eat the bear, sometimes the bear eats you.  It doesn't do any good to try spinning from inside his stomach, and it makes you weaker then  next time you speak out.  Just learn from it.  Next time, make the call, talk to the subject, and you won't have to resort to weak excuses later on.

Bill Harpin

APPLAUSE
HUZZUH! ... on stilts!

Steve
Phoenix

IN GOOD HANDS
At times I almost have myself convinced that I need to start my own blog to put forth my defense of conservatism.  Then I see posts like the one you wrote on "The new poor" and I know that conservatives are in good hands on the internet.  Absolutely brilliant.
 
Keep up the good work,

James Wester
Northern Virginia

KATRINA KIDS
Yeah, especially after the way liberals went after 9-year-old Noah  McCullough who joined George Bush on the campaign trail to lobby for the White House's Social Security plan in 2005! Or the way the liberals tracked down all of those "Katrina Kids" who serenaded Laura  Bush at the White House Easter Egg Roll about how great FEMA was!

Oh wait, you mean liberal activists didn't track down those families and harass them? Imagine that.

Pfft. Your credibility is shot on this one, folks.

Lisa Zhito

VILIFYING THE FROSTS
You're latest missive from a "reader" is simply ridiculous.

"No one is saying Graeme Frost isn't a good kid, or that his family are bad people. What we are saying is that conservatives want to incent middle-class families, of which his is certainly one, to buy private health insurance, or seek employment where it is available. No one is criticizing the Frost's in any way — oddly, no one seems to notice the fact that they did just fine under the pre-expansion SCHIP, and that President Bush proposes to expand further the program that already benefitted them."

Are you serious? No one is vilifying the Frosts? Here's your buddy Dan Riehl:

"Apparently Halsey Frost, father of Graeme Frost, sent an email to Time for their hit piece on conservatives. The man - maybe I should start using the term loosely - appears to have no shame. He either can't read, or has ignored many named individuals who have raised questions regarding why he doesn't mind pimping out his kid, and seems to not have felt compelled to pursue a path that would have supported his kids adequately, particularly as regards their health care.

"Why doesn't he just admit he's a Leftist shill who appears to have remained in an intermittent occupation that didn't adequately support his family until he left them at the mercy of taxpayers, many of whom never had his advantages in life and lack his assets?"

This is just one example. I could surf around and find a dozen more spittle-flecked diatribes just like it from any number of mouth-breathing reactionaries. You know very well that the Frosts have been attacked over and over again. But now that the spotlight is coming back your way, it's convenient to get back on the high road. Nice try, but it's bit late for that, isn't it, Steyn? You're standing knee deep in the sewer with your  insane wingnut friends and now you're trying to convince people now that you don't really smell bad.

John Pinson

YES, THEY ARE BAD PEOPLE
Let me disagree with your correspondent and say it: the Frosts in general (including Graeme) are bad people. They only want what is best for themselves and are willing to damage the country, spit on our Constitution, and/or wreck our economy to get it. This is certainly one pretty fair
indicator of a bad person. The fact that they allow/encourage their child to be inserted into the adult conversation for partisan gain only adds to the impression of their general badness. Should conservatives bend over backwards to avoid being judgmental about these things? Have we become like Seinfeld, where we end every sentence with “…not that there’s anything wrong
with that!”? I sound much more cranky than I actually am, but I am tired of “the children” as the default argument to stop the debate.

Also, why not use the word “encourage”? I too find the “incent/incentivize” constructions an irritant.

Rick Vinas
Arlington, Virginia

DAMNABLE UTTERANCE
Well I'm not a foreigner, and I say we must fight "incent" with everything we have. We shall fight it in the blogs.  We shall fight it on TV.  We shall fight it in the debates.  We shall carry on the struggle until in God's good time this damnable utterance is heard and seen no more.
 
Thomas Williams
Associate Professor of Philosophy and Religious Studies
University of South Florida
 
COME ON YOU’RE SMARTER THAN THAT
"The Boy is Fair Game?"  OK, I know (and given who you are I'm sure you know) that in the Civil War, 12 year old boys were army captains. But today, they are rightly considered children.

How about this sentence next time you're in a similar situation:   "If a political party is desperate enough to send a boy to do a man's job, then the political party is fair game for doing so.  As are
his parents."

Don't defend every stupid move our fellow conservatives make-- especially in the blogosphere.

With the Greatest Respect,

Andrew Berman

PANDERING FOR VOTES
This story is worth more than a note in the Corner.  The Democrats chose the venue, they chose the family, they chose the message.  They gave anyone opposed to further intrusion by the government into health care or other matters of personal responsibility the perfect opportunity to show that they are pandering for votes at the expense of the American taxpayer.  Someone needs to answer the call on this topic with a little research and a lot of outrageous
indignation.

Rick Smith

DON’T RELY ON INSUREBLOG
I have no idea whether the Frost family is rich, poor or whatever. But you cite InsureBlog as a source for the fact that health insurance would cost this family less than they claim based on obtaining a Web quote.

Neither they nor you, apparently, purchase your own insurance. If you think in the real world there is private insurance available for a family of 6 in Baltimore for $452 a month, I have a bridge to sell you.

I recently had to purchase insurance for my own family of 5 in Virginia. I was able to find a plan (with no dental) for $515 per month, but that includes a $2,250 deductible and virtually no co-pays on anything until that deductible is reached. (This plan works for me because I have enough liquid
assets, and I was interested in protection against financial ruin in the event of a catastrophic illness. But if you don't have that kind of cash lying around, this plan would be useless.

The point is, when I shopped on the web, prices were much better than what I ended up with. The reason is that the pricing on the web is the lowest pricing there is -- It assumes every member of your family is in perfect health. (Ironically, of the five members of my family, only my youngest son, age 7, was charged the lowest price, and he was diagnosed with diabetes a few weeks after the plan went into effect).

Anyway, once the company underwrites your policy, and assuming they are willing to insure you, the price increases quite a bit.

For example, the first plan I priced out from BC/BS here in Va on the Web would have cost me about $600/month, but once I contacted an agent and got into the underwriting process, the price turned out to be about $1,200.

If you get insurance via an employer, none of this ever comes up, because the underwriting is not done on an individual basis, but on a group basis. So if you, say, are a higher risk, that cost gets spread across all participants in your group, not on you alone.

Look, attack this family all you want. I'm a liberal, but I don't think people ought to be trotting out 12-year old kids to make political points.

But based on my personal experience, it is entirely possible, if not likely, that both InsureBlog and the father can be telling the truth. You ought to note that.

Alan Zimmerman

BACKPEDALING
Good to see Steyn backpedaling a bit on his earlier comments about the Frost case.  Perhaps in the future he'll take a closer look at the facts of a case before making a lot of misleading statements about it.  I understand that he's just a humor writer, not someone who knows
anything about the issues at hand, but then it'd be appropriate for him to confine himself to jokes and avoid making substantive comments.

I do wonder, though, how Kathy Shaidle's arguments qualify as "robust."  Screaming, sneering, and hurling unsupported assertions are not "robust" by any definition of the term.

Daniel Green

MARK REPLIES: Okay, then. Which of Kathy Shaidle's "assertions" are false?

Oh, and who's backpedaling? I stand by everything I said about the Frost family. A family with a 3,000-square-foot home, commercial property, private education and moneyed grandparents are not "poor" or "needy" people who should be on the government dole.

JUST ANOTHER DAY IN BUSHWORLD
Ooohhh, you so bwave. 

i wish i could say i was surprised at your deravity ; but, sadly, it's just another day in bushworld with your true compassionate conservatism on full display.   i won't even bother with the hypocrisy, since it's part and parcel of your scene.  remember those snowflake babies or this via atrios:

WASHINGTON, Feb. 25 - The battle over Social Security has been joined by an unusual lobbyist, a 9-year-old from Texas who has agreed to travel supporting President Bush's proposal.

The boy, Noah McCullough, made a splash with his encyclopedic command of presidential history, earning five appearances on the "Tonight" show and some unusual experiences in the presidential campaign last year. He beat Howard Dean in a trivia contest at the Democratic National Convention and wrote for his local newspaper about his trip to see the inauguration.

"He's very patriotic and very Republican," said Noah's mother, Donna McCullough, a former teacher and self-described Democrat. "It's the way he was born."

you are a pathetic little turd.  BOOO!

Linda Long

MARK REPLIES: Well, for what it’s worth I am surprised by my deravity. I had no idea I was so deraved.

CATASTROPHIC INSURANCE
If the child was injured in an accident the CAR insurance should be paying the medical bills - either the person at fault's insurance or the medical rider on their own car insurance.

Why don't we end this desire to have the government pay for health care by simply providing help with catastrophic bills in excess of 30% of income and low interest loans to pay the 30% share if necessary.  I think the issue is driven more by a middle class fears that a catastrophic illness will leave them bankrupt than by children going with out health care.  I think everyone knows that children who are really sick get cared for at little or no cost at various charitable medical centers
around the country.

Jeri L. Nunley, MBA
Stanley Security Solutions
Tucker, Georgia

CAN’T SELL
I live three blocks from their address.  Almost no houses around here are selling at all, and prices in this neighborhood is in no way commensurate with square footage.  A few blocks southwest of their home is one for sale in decent condition with similar square footage listed at $216k.  Property tax records on their home show an appraised value of $260k and I'd say that's probably about accurate for a house that size in that part of the neighborhood.  By contrast, the house I rent is appraised at $111k which is probably low but reasonably accurate.

In general, many many people with low incomes live in houses that are appraised at high values in this neighborhood right now because of huge run-ups in prices from 2000-2006.

Zach Hensel

WELFARE NATION
Is not the place you described (a nation where everyone is a ward of the state) known as Canada?

An expatriate (in state income tax free Tennessee),

Wendell O'Reilly

ROCKET SCIENTIST
Her father, according to this cached Obit, was more or less a rocket scientist.

Welcome to the underclass, eh?

James Sebring Sr.

HOT CHIPS
Blue/Blue Shield is the standard for all public education employees in Georgia.  In fact, the only way the schools can get all the part-time and seasonal employees they need is by offering it/  If the S-CHIP increase goes through, every custodian, lunch lady, bus driver, and secretary would be better off electing single or spousal coverage, and putting the kids under S-CHIP.  The same goes for every single mom teacher and every male teacher married to a stay-at-home mom.

Dave Taggart
Calhoun, Georgia

SICK AND SLIMEY
I read it.  You are one sick, pathetic, self-righteous slimeball.

Donald Dal Maso
NYC

LAZY AND ENTITLED
Moot point about how much his dad or granddad made. Americans want "FREE" health care for everyone and will get it. Rich, poor doesn't matter. The common denominator for all Americans is lazy and entitled. If the govt can do it for you, why bother doing it yourself?

Eduard Dordea

SHAME
Even you should be ashamed of yourself.  Next time, do your homework.

Jeanne Walls

MEAN, ROTTEN AND MENTALLY ILL
The soft underbelly of conservatism is callous selfishness.  The idea that "if you're poor today, it's almost always for behavioral reasons" purposely ignores two crucial truths:

1.  Some people are really so screwed up that they're incapable of making good decisions.  Kathy Shaidle notes that some of the poor are suffering from "undiagnosed but easily treated mental illnesses,"  as though a little therapy and prozac is all they need.  Ever work in a homeless
shelter?  I have.  No amount of therapy or medication is going to turn most homeless people into productive citizens.  These people are by and large extremely messed up.

2.  Not every person is as responsible as the most responsible person.  We are all human, and we all make mistakes.  In this world, small mistakes often have disastrous, life-changing consequences -- the best example is a 17 year-old who thinks she (or he) has found true love.  My parents taught me to have compassion for those who don't happen to have high IQ's as well as parents capable enough to instill the kind of values that can propel a kid from from the ghetto to the Ivy League.  Perhaps Kathy Shaidle grew up disadvantaged in that regard.  Perhaps her parents were mean, rotten people who taught her to be mean and rotten.  Maybe she has an undiagnosed but easily treatable mental illness.

Michael A. Buxbaum
Lowenstein Sandler PC
New York, New York NUTS
Mark Steyn must be losing his mind.  It's because of behavioral choices that people IN AMERICA don't have enough food to eat?  Maybe your behavior is causing it Mark, but not theirs.  Your words are despicable.
 
Gregory Scott Coleman

YOU’RE NOT A MEANIE…
You're just an asshole. A tiresome, windy asshole.

But you already know that, right?

Jeff Borden

YOU’RE LYING
Mark, you are indeed a cutting edge conservative. In the name of ideological purity, you believe in making things up [called 'lying' in a non-PC world], as a matter of principle. You enjoy trashing the
hard-working poor. They're not part of your class, they take scholarships, they use SCHIP, etc. That makes them, like Graeme Frost, "fair game."  The beauty of being an ideologue is that one needs no moral imagination, no empathy. It's the means by which a presumed believer in freedom and individualism can come to sound like some old Communist hack: Anyone who falls outside one's ideological frame is a non-person. Congratulations.

Eric Heath
Stanford

ACID DROP
Hi Mr. Steyn.  Interesting venom in your 10/08 post.   Just one question: Presuming you have children, who pays for their health insurance?  If not your employer, is it your maternal grandfather?  Go eat a lemon.

Meo

Joe Nick Patoski
Wimberley, Texas A FREAK AND A HACK
Push your head firmly back into your asshole. Obviously you had to pull it out to unstop the bile and excrement that poured forth. Last time I read the filth you call a column – turned my stomach, and the beer that was twenty feet away in the fridge.

How a hack like you has an audience is beyond comprehension. I would rate you more a circus freak.

 I would imagine you live in your own Hell.

See you never.

Mike Carragher
Edmonton, Alberta
npambrun@telus.net

MARK REPLIES: Are you and your friends turned on by the thought of my asshole and my excrement? Because an awful lot of you chaps seem to focus on them quite obsessively. Do you have anything to say about foreign policy, war, domestic entitlements, etc, that would require you to craft a sentence not containing references to bottoms, excreta, vomit, etc? Or are you just a
lonely coprophiliac reading for the bodily-evacuations references? If it would help, we could send you some.

IT'LL REALLY HIT HOME
Your posts on The Corner, it seems that you do not take seriously the impact that President Bush's SCHIP veto will have on families like mine. I am the sole provider for a family of four. My income this year will be just under $72,000, which as a New Jersey resident would qualify me for the SCHIP plan. Right now I am paying about $8,000 a year for insurance through my employer. If I were to drop my two kids from the plan and put them on SCHIP, I would save over $3,500 a
year in out of pocket expense. On a recent trip to BestBuy I saw that for $3,500 I could buy a Panasonic 50" 1080p Flat-Panel Plasma HDTV. But unless Congress overrides the President’s veto, I will be stuck watching my 20" regular definition TV. So while you may make light of the
bill's failure, come Super Bowl Sunday, the President’s veto is going to hit home hard for me.

Rich Van Saders

NOT SHOCKED
Gee looks like you are another lying republiCON cock sucker Why am I not shocked.

John J Leonard

HERE WE GO AGAIN
hey, jewboy...get perfected, will ya, for christ'sake sakes, jesus..!.

BWA-HA-HA-HA-HA-HA-HA-HA-HA!

(see under: ann cunter)

Bill Wilson
billofwrites@earthlink.net

MY BROTHER
I see a lot of people saying that the Frosts could have afforded  insurance for 600 and 700 dollars a month.

Here's the thing. Explain to the insurance agent that you have a child with a brain stem injury. I have a brother who has the same thing.

His name is Chris and he has been an alcoholic since I can remember. He is 42 years old. My parents, who are both over 70, had decided to take him in and try to help him detox. He went there and had a grand Mal seizure from withdrawal. He hit is head and suffered a subcranial 
hematoma in one of the lobes of his brain.

The family gathered that day to basically watch him die at the hospital. A young doctor walked in and said there was a procedure that had less than a 25% chance to work. Or he could just be made comfortable and pass away. We went with the surgery, and miraculously, he made it through. He remained in the NICU for about 9 weeks. They woke him out of a drug induced coma after 6, and we moved him to a foster/hospice after that because my parents couldn't monitor him in their old age.

9 Weeks in the NICU came to about 600,000 dollars, because he wasn't insured. You see, he was an alcoholic and a sometime vagrant that everyone in my family hated to one extent or another. He used to put cigarettes out on my arms and legs for fun. I don't like him. But  he's my brother, so we searched out a way to take care of him. S-CHIP was not available, so we did what we could with Medicaid, and my father ended up having to go back to work because of the cost.

S_CHIP being expanded is not a bad thing. Write me back if you want to interview me about this. me and my family are now experts on "socialized medicine" and the destruction of family assets.

Joseph Mullin

LAST WORD
Remember Maureen Dowd's crazy statement that Cindy Sheehan had absolute moral authority, meaning you cannot criticize her? Well Graeme Frost is also held up by the Left as having a sort of unassailable moral authority by virtue of being a child. And isn't this the whole point of parading the phony (poseurs) soldiers about too? Hey, these guys can't be criticized. It seems to me that the Left throws wild grenades of accusations or policy statements at the country and administration and
use these human shields to protect them from analysis and criticism.

Michael B. Babbitt