More Dishonesty About SCHIP

Mark Steyn writes on NRO's The Corner blog about a recent example of SCHIP dishonesty. In response to one of President Bush's Saturday radio addresses, the Democrats paraded a 12-year old kid to plead for government health care. The Baltimore Sun printed the plight of this kid, but a couple of bloggers have blown the lid off a can of blatant lies. Here are some excerpts from the Sun's article:

Bonnie Frost works for a medical publishing firm; her husband, Halsey, is a woodworker. They are raising their four children on combined income of about $45,000 a year. Neither gets health insurance through work. Had it not been for a federal health insurance program tailored for working families such as hers - ones lacking the income to purchase private health insurance - Frost is certain that she and her husband would be buried under a mound of unpaid medical bills... She and her husband have priced private health insurance, but they say it would cost them more per month than their mortgage - about $1,200 a month. Neither parent has health insurance through work.

Here's what the bloggers -- who clearly did a better job of 'investigative reporting' than the Sun's reporter -- found out:

Mr Frost, the "woodworker", owns his own design company and the commercial property it operates from, part of which space he also rents out; they have a 3,000-sq-ft home on a street where a 2,000-sq-ft home recently sold for half a million dollars; he was able to afford to send two children simultaneously to a $20,000-a-year private school; his father and grandfather were successful New York designers and architects...

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?

If SCHIP was truly a better program for American health care, why would the proponents have to lie about it? Yet another example of Democrat dishonesty, and of the blogosphere shining the light of truth on dirty political hacks.

There's my two cents.