[cato2]

WHEN RIGHT-WING ATTACKS BACKFIRE:

WHEN RIGHT-WING ATTACKS BACKFIRE: This is the story of how some bloggers on the right tried to undermine a popular government program, disparage a Baltimore family, and discredit the mainstream media -- and how it ended up validating all three in the process.

It's a story that starts earlier this month, after Congress had passed a substantial expansion of the State Children's Health Insurance Program (S-CHIP.) As readers of this space know -- skip down to the break if you can recite chapter and verse on S-CHIP already -- the program's purpose is to make sure low-income children get health insurance. But it doesn't target the poorest of the poor, since the most destitute children already qualify for Medicaid. Rather, it focuses on those children in families too wealthy to qualify for Medicaid but still too poor or otherwise unable to buy insurance on their own.

States contribute some of the program's funding and have considerable flexibility over how to design their respective programs. Over the years, many have sought -- and received -- permission from Washington to make S-CHIP coverage available to children in more middle-income families and even some adults. Why? Because some of these people, too, were having a hard time getting insurance on their own.

S-CHIP, which has long enjoyed bipartisan support, has been so successful that Congress this year voted to expand it -- again, with votes not just from Democrats but Republicans, too. Under the expansion, according to projections, several million more children would get health insurance. The vast majority of them would still be low-income, although -- once again -- some would be from what most people would consider middle-class families.
President Bush, by contrast, had initially proposed to fund the program at a much lower level -- so low, in fact, that states likely would have been forced to expel people currently on the program. With the expansion heading to his desk, he vowed to veto it -- arguing that it would take S-CHIP too far from its original mission. He also warned that an expanded S-CHIP would pave the way for universal health insurance, since some of the people who got the new publicly funded coverage might otherwise have gotten private insurance at some point.

***
This is where that Baltimore family comes into the picture. About two weeks ago, the Democrats decided to use their weekly radio address to showcase the program. And rather than have a member of Congress give the address, they had Graeme Frost, a 12-year-old boy whose family had enrolled him in Maryland's S-CHIP, do it.

The story, as he and the Democrats presented it, went like this. Graeme's father was a woodworker; his mother had a part-time administrative job. Together, their income was around $45,000 a year -- not enough to afford health insurance, which they had priced at around $1,200 a month, given their other living expenses. And medical care was not something they wanted to go without. In December, 2004, Graeme and his sister were hospitalized for severe brain trauma after a car accident. Graeme was in a coma for a week and has required physical therapy ever since.

"My parents work hard and always make sure my sister and I have everything we need, but the hospital bills were huge," Graeme said in the radio address. "We got the help we needed because we had health insurance for us through the CHIP program. But there are millions of kids out there who don't have CHIP, and they wouldn't get the care that my sister and I did if they got hurt."

That might have been the end of the story. Putting up poster children for political causes is pretty routine stuff in politics. It happens dozens of times a day, in congressional hearings and on the campaign trail. Few people who come forward for these events get much scrutiny.

For some reason, the Frosts did, as right-wing bloggers dup up what they said were some inconvenient details: One house in the Graeme's neighborhood has recently sold for half a million dollars, they reported. Graeme's father, Halsey, owned his own business and had his own commercial property. Graeme and his sister went to an elite private school where tuition was some $20,000 a year. The Frost house had granite countertops in the kitchen.

"If business owners with half-million-dollar-plus homes and kids in expensive private schools now count as 'working families,' does this mean they'll get tax cuts?" Glenn Reynolds queried. And he was being polite, all things considered. Here's another conservative blogger, named Don Surber: "This business of 'affordable insurance' is socialistic. The Frosts found an 'affordable' business building and an 'affordable' 3,000-square foot house and an 'affordable' private school. Why couldn't these yuppies afford to cover their own damned kids?"

Bob Vineyard at InsureBlog went one step further and priced sample policies for the Frosts. "$1200 per month for a family of 6 in Baltimore. Really? What are they smoking? A check of a quote engine for zip code 21250 (Baltimore) finds a plan for $641 with a $0 deductible and $20 doc copays. Adding a deductible of $750 (does not apply to doc visits) drops the premium to $452. That's almost a third of the price quoted in the article. Doesn't anyone bother to check the facts?"
And Vineyard wasn't the only one slamming the mainstream media for swallowing the supposed Democratic spin. Here's Mark Steyn, at National Review Online , attacking Matthew Hay Brown, a Baltimore Sun reporter who first wrote about the Frosts: "If it ever occurred to Matthew Hay Brown, the Sun's 'reporter', to look into just what kind of 'woodworking' Mr. Frost did, he managed to suppress the urge." And here's Samantha Sault, at the Weekly Standard: "Brown profiled the 'poor' Frost family, but failed to ask some important questions. As it turns out, little Graeme isn't so poor, and bloggers are on the story." Later, she added, "Since Halsey Frost owns his own business, he should have taken responsibility and purchased insurance for his family."

Michelle Malkinjumped in, too: "It turns out--as it does with so many health care stories pimped by the Democrats and the MSM--that there is much more to the Frosts' story than meets the eye. The family is not as destitute as the MSM has made them out to be." She then went to Baltimore to check things out for herself, interviewing a tenant at Mr. Frost's commercial property and driving by the Frost home.

I just returned from a visit to Frost's commercial property near Patterson Park in Baltimore. It's a modest place. Talked to one of the tenants, Mike Reilly, who is a talented welder. He said he had known the Frosts for 10 years. Business is good, he told me, though he characterized Frost as 'struggling.' Reilly was an outspoken advocate for socialized health care without any means-testing whatsoever and an insistent critic of the Iraq war. Despite all that, he did agree with me that going without health insurance is often a matter of choice and a matter of priorities. Or maybe we were speaking two different languages.

I also passed by the Frosts' rowhouse. There was an '01-20-09' bumper sticker plastered on the door and a newer model GMC Suburban parked directly in front of the house. I've seen guesstimates of the house's worth in the $400,000-plus range. Those are high. But Mark Tapscott's point remains: '[P]eople make choices and it's clear the Frosts have made choice to invest in property and a business, but not in private health insurance. The Maryland-administered version of the federal SCHIP program, by the way, does not impose an asset test on applicants.

Although her reporting complicated the situation slightly -- the tenant had, after all, did say the Frost family was "struggling" -- Malkin didn't flinch from her conclusions. And as left-wing bloggers began to criticize Malkin and the other right-wing bloggers for ganging up on the Frost family, she struck back:

When a family and Democrat political leaders drag a child down to Washington at 6 in the morning to read a script written by Senate Democrat staffers on a crusade to overturn a presidential veto, someone might have questions about the family's claims. The newspapers don't want to do their jobs. The vacuum is being filled. If you don't want questions, don't foist these children onto the public stage. Fight your battles like adults and stop hiding behind youngsters dragging around red wagons filled with your talking points.

***
Funny thing, though. It's not clear how many, if any, of the right-wingers digging into the story -- the ones in such high dudgeon over the failure to "report" this story fully -- actually spoke to the Frosts themselves. In fact, it looks like a lot of them picked out a fact or two -- or, in some cases, merely speculated about what the facts were -- and then wrote screeds accusing the Frosts, the media, and the supporters of S-CHIP.

(I don't know yet whether Malkin tried to interview the Frosts. I've emailed her to ask and will update this when I hear back.)

On the other hand, Matthew Brown, the supposedly lazy Sun reporter, did interview the family -- once after the radio interview and, later, after the controversy began. And so, fortunately, did David Herszenhorn of The New York Times, who produced a level-headed and insightful writeup:

As it turns out, the Frosts say, Graeme attends the private school on scholarship. The business that the critics said Mr. Frost owned was dissolved in 1999. The family's home, in the modest Butchers Hill neighborhood of Baltimore, was bought for $55,000 in 1990 and is now worth about $260,000, according to public records. And, for the record, the Frosts say, their kitchen counters are concrete.

Certainly the Frosts are not destitute. They also own a commercial property, valued at about $160,000, that provides rental income. Mr. Frost works intermittently in woodworking and as a welder, while Mrs. Frost has a part-time job at a firm that provides services to publishers of medical journals. Her job does not provide health coverage.

That last part is really important -- and, frankly, really basic for anybody who knows the first thing about health care. Given that her job doesn't provide coverage -- and he's a small business owner -- they're going to have to buy coverage on their own, through a broker that sells individual policies, or through some sort of association. As a general rule, such coverage is far more expensive than the coverage available through large employers, in part because the administrative costs are a lot higher. (Think of this way, it's a lot cheaper to administer the same benefit for 5,000 people at a large employer than it is to administer 5,000 policies for people who are self-employed.)

But wait -- didn't that health care blogger, Bob Vineyard, say he found a policy that cost just $450 a month? Perhaps you may recall his gentle comment about the Frosts: "What are they smoking?"

Here's what Vineyard didn't mention. It's the insurers who sell individual and small business coverage that screen carefully for pre-existing medical conditions, raising premiums or denying coverage for those whom they deem high medical risks. Sure enough, according to Herszenhorn:

In a telephone interview, the Frosts said they had recently been rejected by three private insurance companies because of pre-existing medical conditions.

I e-mailed Vineyard to see whether the cheap policy he quoted might have covered pre-existing conditions. Vineyard, who is also a private health insurance agent, declined to answer my questions. Instead, he responded thusly:

I'm not sure why you would try and divert the issue away from the point of my blog, but that is your prerogative. Have a nice day.

***
Now, let me be clear. I cannot verify the Frost story personally. I put in a call into the family but, apparently, so did a few dozen other reporters in the last few days. According to a spokesman for the liberal group FamiliesUSA, which had brought the Frosts forward -- a fact fully disclosed in the original reportage, in case you're wondering -- the Frosts have been taken aback by all the attention and the vitriol. They're mulling how to proceed. I can't say that I blame them.

If I did speak to them, I'd actually like to ask a few other questions that might shed even more light on the situation. In particular, I'd want to know more about the nature of the Maryland S-CHIP plan they have. (From what I can tell, the state makes several different policies available.)
Did it, for example, have premiums, as many state S-CHIP plans do? What exactly did the plan cover -- and with what, if any, cost-sharing? These are important questions to answer because it's entirely possible that, even with S-CHIP, the family still has some out-of-pocket expenses from the physical therapy and other services they receive. At the very least, their health care isn't actually "free," which is what you hear over and over again from conservative S-CHIP critics.

Then again, maybe the finer points of the Frost story really aren't all so important after all. Anecdotes matter when they illustrate a larger trend. And while I can't vouch for the details about the Frosts -- who knows, maybe the secretly use their taxpayer-financed windfall to visit the Bahamas every weekend -- I can say that that the story they've told is a very common one.

We know that people with modest incomes are having a harder time paying their medical bills, because insurance is getting so pricey and -- increasingly -- the benefits available leave them exposed to high out-of-pocket expenses. We also know this is particularly true of people who can't get coverage through large employers -- a class of people that is expanding as the business community slowly extricates itself from the mess of providing workers with insurance.

In other words, it's not just the most destitute Americans who need assistance getting health insurance. It's people who have jobs, make a decent living, and own their homes. And when medical crisis hits, they're forced to take drastic steps -- like selling their homes, depleting life savings, declaring bankruptcy, or simply going without the care they and their loved ones need. Unless, of course, the government provides them with insurance at affordable rates.

Maybe that's why polls show large majorities of Americans supporting S-CHIP expansion and, increasingly, the creation of a universal health care system guaranteeing coverage as a birthright.

And maybe that is why the right is getting so desperate. They know they are defending a hopelessly dysfunctional system -- a system in which even the middle class can struggle.

--Jonathan Cohn
UPDATE: Ezra digs up the story of a somebody else in Maryland who couldn't find health insurance. She and her husband had to buy insurance on the individual market and -- predictably -- there was no affordable coverage to be had. Who was this person? Why, none other than Michelle Malkin.




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