This question is for grown-ups only: Who deserves government-subsidized health insurance?

What if I told you I drove these three cars (photos are showroom models):

A Volvo SUV…

A GMC Suburban…

And a nice, big Ford F250 Pickup work truck…

And what if I told you, further, that I owned a large home and commercial property worth at least $400,000 in total–property for which I paid a total of $215,000?

And what if I told you, in addition, that I was resourceful enough to cobble together financing (through scholarships and other means) for private school education for four children?

And what if I told you that neither I nor my spouse were employed full-time–one of us working “intermittently” and the other “part-time”?

Would you consider my family “exactly the kind” and “precisely the type” of family that should benefit from S-CHIP, the government-subsidized health insurance program intended for the “working poor?”

I received an unsolicited e-mail this week from a neighbor of the Frost family, the family held up by Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi, and the entitlement expansionist Democrats. He wrote:

They’re good people. Terribly misguided, pathetically leftist buffoons, but still good people. It was a terrible accident and Bonnie is quite beat up with guilt over the events. Lots of neighbors pitched in to cook meals and help out… Bonnie works half time doing freelance editorial work and Halsey, an incredibly disorganized lovable goofball, just can’t seem to hold down a proper job or, when he’s tried, to run a proper company. He’s a millwork carpenter and does great work installing custom interior and exterior trimwork and cabinetry. He should be making great money but can’t get out of his way…

…Still, we make choices, right? They have three vehicles – a nice new volvo SUV, a Suburban, and his F250 Ford Pickup work truck, a nice house, and all four kids go to private school. Not sure where the money comes from, but they don’t make all that much. Should they be the poster child for S-CHIP? Heck no….

In the infantilized world of liberals, it is “sliming a child” to ask a “meanie” question that cuts to the core of the supposed differences between the two major political parties:

Who deserves government-subsidized health insurance?

Are Democrats capable of putting down the human shields and answering the question?

And what about Republicans?

Who represents the truly needy?

Who represents the taxpayers, the future generations, who would be forced to send their hard-earned money to fund a massive, middle-class entitlement expansion?

I’ll repeat what I said three days ago:

If Republicans don’t have the guts to hold the line, they deserve to lose their seats.

***

More:

– The House veto override vote is scheduled for Oct. 18. Democrats are looking for 15 GOP ship-jumpers. The pressure is on. Is your voice getting heard?

– Contrary to the liars in the left-wing blogosphere, you will not find one negative, ad hominem word about the Frost children written by me on this blog. Try and find one. Quote it. Show me. It has never been about “sliming” the children. By contrast, Jon Henke exposes the disgusting filth leveled at a 9-year-old boy who lobbied for Social Security reform:

I also note with some amusement that Lefties defend their initial use of the kid by pointing out that Republicans brought out a kid to help sell the Social Security in 2005. Joan Walsh claims “Atrios notes that nobody went after nine-year-old Noah McCullough when Bush made him a poster boy for privatizing Social Security.”

Well, funny you bring that up, because that’s not the way I recall it. There was…

* Jesus’ General and TBogg, who made sexual references to the kid…

* Kewpie, who called him “a budding young fascist” and “dumb”…

* DadaHead, who said the kid was “in desperate need of a good ass-kicking…”

* Democratic Underground, where commenters wrote quite a lot of things that I don’t care to reprint…

* Salon’s What Would Dick Think, Daily Kos and Atrios, who called the kid “Cousin Oliver”

* And, at Ezra Klein’s own blog, Melissa McEwan said his appearance was “indicative of a desperation reserved for policy proposals that are ready for the graveyard”…

But other than that, they didn’t go after him at all.

– Paul Krugman’s hysterical op-ed today is rife with errors and distortions, but this is the most blatant:

The parents have a combined income of about $45,000, and don’t receive health insurance from employers. When they looked into buying insurance on their own before the accident, they found that it would cost $1,200 a month — a prohibitive sum given their income. After the accident, when their children needed expensive care, they couldn’t get insurance at any price.

Where did Krugman get his information?

In fact, the $1,200 figure that the Frosts cited is the purported cost Bonnie Frost says she found after the accident. That’s what she told the Baltimore Sun. Did she tell Krugman otherwise?

FYI, Golden Rule Insurance currently offers a plan for a healthy Baltimore family of 6 for $190 to $423 per month depending on the plan. Once again, of course, the Left will decry the high cost of insurance for consumers trying to get it after a catastrophic event.

Once again, they will ignore the fundamental

concept of how insurance is supposed to work. I repeat again:

If you don’t buy it before you need it, you shouldn’t be shocked if it’s difficult to impossible to get after you need it.

It’s elementary.

– Grown-up Paul Mirengoff responds to E.J. Dionne’s childish column.

***

Update 12:15am Eastern 10/13: The Wall Street Journal editorial board, last seen attacking conservatives who opposed shamnesty, now sneers at “conservative bloggers” and “the Internet mob” for questioning the Democrats’ S-CHIP poster family’s financial status:

After the Schip veto, Democrats chose a 12-year-old boy named Graeme Frost to deliver a two-minute rebuttal. While that was a political stunt, the Washington habit of employing “poster children” is hardly new. But the Internet mob leapt to some dubious conclusions and claimed the Frost kids shouldn’t have been on Schip in the first place. As it turns out, they belonged to just the sort of family that a modest Schip is supposed to help.

“Just the sort of family,” eh? Yes, the WSJ’s animosity towards the blogosphere runs so deep it would rather recycle Harry Reid’s and Nancy Pelosi’s talking points than concede anything to the “Internet mob.”

ORDER IT NOW

To review quickly: We are now “meanies,” “hypocrites,” “slimers,” and “mobsters” for challenging the wisdom of taking money away from taxpayers of lesser means who are responsible enough to buy insurance before a catastrophic event in order to subsidize two-property, three-car families with four children in private schools and two parents who work “intermittently” and “part-time” who didn’t have the foresight or priorities to purchase insurance before a tragic auto accident.

And they call our conclusions “dubious?”

Update 7:45pm Eastern. BitsBlog wonders:

I’d like to know how in the wide wide world of sports they’re managing to pay for all of this on $45k of income. There are only three possible answers: They’re not paying it on that income because they’re getting a good deal of unreported income which allows them to support this lifestyle…. else/and they are hyper-extended, credit-wise, and thereby essentially unprepared for ANY emergency. In any of these cases, there is very serious question about using these people as a poster for government takeover of health care.

If in fact the Frosts are emblematic of the type of family the Democrats think are deserving of healthcare paid for with MY money, we as a nation have bigger problems than we’re going to be able to solve by throwing your money and mine at it. We have a problem centering on honesty and responsibility.

Grown-up meanie Mark Steyn boils it down: “…a two-property three-car family does not demonstrate the need for entitlement expansion.”