RUSH: I want to talk a little bit about this S-CHIP business and the Frost family, because the Baltimore Sun today has a story: ‘Frost Family Draws Ire of Conservatives,’ and what they’re basically writing in this piece, is listing all the conservatives including me, who are ‘attacking’ this family and making it unfortunate. They’re a nice little family and so forth and so on, and the mean conservatives are out there saying all these rotten things. They quote me, Michelle Malkin, Mark Steyn, and so forth. The way this all happened was, ‘the Frosts joined the debate through family acquaintance Vinnie DeMarco, the president of the Maryland Citizens Health Initiative. DeMarco introduced them to the pro-SCHIP organization Families USA, which put them in touch with Nancy Pelosi’s office,’ and, voila, they were made stars, Graeme Frost and his sister in the address responding to President Bush’s Saturday radio address and so forth.
‘The Frosts declined to show The Sun their 2006 income tax returns, and the state Department of Health and Mental Hygiene would not confirm their enrollment in the program. But John G. Folkemer, the deputy secretary for health care financing, said yesterday that applicants must prove their income levels through Social Security numbers or tax returns to be accepted for coverage. [But] Folkemer said a family’s assets are not considered in determining eligibility. … The four Frost children depend on financial aid to attend private school, the Frosts say. In addition, they say, Gemma [Frost] receives money from the city for special education made necessary by her injuries. Halsey and Bonnie Frost say they still have no health insurance. Bonnie Frost said she priced coverage recently at $1,200 a month.’ Well, these people can clearly afford it. They just choose not to. But, folks, this is not the point. What everybody is missing about this is what I think is the nuts and bolts of the whole program. This is the State Children’s Health Insurance Program. It’s ten years old, and it’s up for renewal. The Democrats are trying to increase the program so that it covers ‘babies’ up to the age of 25, families of four up to the income level of $83,000, and any number of other people. It’s beyond ‘the poor.’ The poor have nothing to do with this program as the Democrats want it.
The president has not suggested it be ‘cut.’ The president wants to increase the funding by, what is it, $4 billion, annually, but keep the coverage at poor children. Now, the dirty little secret is this: the Democrats put lies into the Frost kids’ heads; they send them out in television and radio to make these statements. One of the things that the kid said, ‘I just want children in my circumstance to be able to get the health care I got.’ Well, guess what? They got their health care under the previous iteration of the program! They don’t need an increase in the program for them to qualify, strangely, because the state of Maryland can qualify whoever they want. So the whole thing is bogus! We don’t need the massive Democrat expansion in order to get this Frost family covered. They were covered under this program as it currently exists. Yet they were trotted out to make it look like they would not have been able to recover from their auto accident because of George Bush. It’s another flat-out smear, and lie, and misrepresentation by Democrats who cannot dare tell the truth about anything, and the truth in this case is their intention for this program to be one of many stealth programs to get us, stealthfully, down the road of socialized medicine, with the government running the whole thing. This poor family has been propped up and used — and it’s just typical for the Democrats.
It’s getting to the point when you hear the Democrats start talking about ‘for the children,’ think of yourself, because they want to look at all of us as ‘children,’ as incapable and incompetent as children are to make decisions ourselves. So they start wanting everything for the children. They’re talking about every damn one of us, and the way they use these people is just shocking. Not shocking. It’s just disgusting to me, and many of the people they end up using are frauds in the first place. There was a case, and I had it in the stack yesterday, some mother back in the mid-nineties, Hillary used this woman to promote health insurance for everybody and so forth and so on. The mother had a baby, and the baby was continually sick with digestive problems. The doctors couldn’t figure it out. No matter what they tried, she didn’t get better, and it took $2 million of health care over a number of months and years, and they still could not figure any of this out. Well, they later found out that the mother had been force-feeding the kid certain kinds of health foods or whatever that screwed the little kid all up, and then had defrauded some government agency of $60,000 — and these are the people that the Democrats trot up.
There was another case. Michelle Malkin writes about this today in the New York Post. I forget this woman’s name, but the Democrats had her walking the highway, picking up thrown-away beer bottles, plastic bottles and cans to redeem at the grocery store for a nickel apiece so that she could be able to finally afford food and medicine — and they made a big deal, and they dragged her up to Washington. Her wealthy son exposed the fraud of all this. She was totally capable of affording what she wanted. The Democrats just find these people and they create ’em, and they’ve done the same thing with the Frosts. You people in the Drive-By Media — who wrote this piece in the Baltimore Sun? Matthew Hay Brown. Matthew, I know you’re a good reporter. I know you’re trying to be a good reporter. Do a story tomorrow on the fact that the program, as it exists, would have provided the care. It did provide the Frosts exactly what they needed. They got it. They did not need the Democrats’ expansion of this, and to be propped up out there on national radio and television, and to suggest they wouldn’t get what they got, if Bush gets his way, is just wrong. It is plain wrong.
You are a journalist, Mr. Hay Brown. You are supposed to get to the truth of things. Instead you focus on the personalities here and how rotten and mean conservatives are. Well, the truth about this family is the truth about this family — and they’re being used, and they had a bunch of lies pumped into the kid’s head, put him on radio, gave him a script and so forth. It’s a twelve-year-old kid, for crying out loud. I’m just not going to sit here and believe a 12-year-old kid came up with this thought, and belief, and philosophy on his own. Somebody had to pump him full of it in his head, or put it on the script for him to read, or what have you. He’s just a pawn, a 12-year-old kid being used, to advance a distortion and a lie! It really is central to this. The Democrats will do anything they can to get you and me to pay ever much more for another expansion of the federal government that they then are going to control. To put this family out there and try to make the country believe that without this new expansion the Democrats want, this poor family would have been left out? This poor family got exactly what they needed from the program as it exists, and that’s what’s not being reported about this — and that’s journalistic malpractice.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Here’s Brian, San Antonio, Texas, welcome to the program. It’s great to have you with us.
CALLER: Rush, mega dittos, and thank you for all you’ve ever done, man.
RUSH: Thank you, sir.
CALLER: All right. You mentioned the hypocrisy that this Frost family is showing. They’re turning down a free government program right now, which would be public schools, and they’re choosing to put their kids into private schools. They’d rather pay to have a service than to have the government provide it.
RUSH: Well, I’ve been reading about this. They apparently get some tuition assistance on the private school business. Let’s see.
CALLER: It’s a dime out of their pocket. They’d rather pay and have their kids in the private sector so they can make the decisions.
RUSH: Look, here’s another question. I mean, if you want to start asking questions about this: What caused the injuries to the kids in the first place?
CALLER: I couldn’t tell you. I haven’t followed it that close.
RUSH: It was an auto accident. I don’t think they had automobile insurance, either. Why not? I didn’t know. I’ve heard that said, and they didn’t have auto insurance. I don’t know how you don’t have auto insurance. I thought that was legally required.
CALLER: Maybe they’re waiting for the libs to start to bring that into the Constitution, and then you gotta have it.
RUSH: Maybe so, waiting for the feds to come up with an auto insurance program. Look, I think, folks, it is required in Maryland. Auto insurance is required. I’ve heard they didn’t have auto insurance, either, but (sigh) regardless. We’re all getting sidetracked here by the Frosts and their personal economic circumstance. They are what they are. They’re not destitute. They certainly have the ability to buy it. They’re working for a company that doesn’t offer health insurance, and it’s a medical services company. The father, I think it was, or maybe the mother. But all of this is a sideshow; it’s a distraction. You have to stay focused on what the Democrats are trying to do here in expanding this program and take it way beyond poor kids and take it way beyond kids. Anybody that’s 25, under the Democrat proposal, what the president vetoed, would be qualified — 25 years of age! You theoretically could have a family of four with a 24-year-old dad, a 23-year-old mom and two kids all qualify for the ‘poor’ children’s health program as the Democrats have proposed it — especially if that family’s income didn’t top $83,000 a year. Eighty-two-five, I think, on the Democrats’ plan, you’re covered, within this program — and these guys, the Frost family, own investment properties, too.
So they clearly chose not to buy it. But that’s still, the point is that the Democrats trot out these two kids, fill them with words to say attacking George Bush. I mean, little kids that go out there and say, ‘I want children like me to be able to have the same health care opportunities I had.’ Well, the implication is that this evil George Bush is going to take health care away from decent Americans like the Frosts! Well, again, I say (panting) time and again: the Frost family was covered as the program currently exists! Every other family like the Frosts, believe it or not, will be covered by what the program already is. But the Frosts were sent out there to make it look like, ‘If Bush didn’t eventually sign this, and we didn’t get the Democrats’ expansion of the program, then poor kids like the Frost kids will be left to die in hospitals with no coverage!’ It’s a blatant, out-and-out lie and distortion. The fact of their economic circumstances, financial circumstances is, to me, interesting because it goes to show that the program’s already bloated. But the lie and the effort is to make everybody believe that only the expansion would cover the Frosts when they were covered as the program currently exists — I’m going to say this as many times as it takes to sink in to people, because that’s the lie about this.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Myron in Kingman, Arizona, welcome, sir, to the EIB Network. You’re next.
CALLER: Hello, Rush.
RUSH: Hey, Myron, how are you?
CALLER: Great. Thank you for the opportunity.
RUSH: Yes, sir.
CALLER: We’ve been talking about the fact that this S-CHIP law has a lot to do with the coverage for indigent children in health care, but one of the hidden provisions is I think perhaps of even greater significance, it also shows the manner in which the Democrats really don’t value what it is the market brings to health care, and that provision that’s hidden inside the S-CHIP bill will prohibit hospitals from being owned by physicians.
RUSH: It will prohibit hospitals from being owned by doctors?
CALLER: That’s correct.
RUSH: Now that I didn’t know. And, you know, Myron, it’s very rare when a caller informs me of something I’m uninformed on. And you’ve just done it. I did not know that that provision was in there. I know there’s all kinds of stuff in addition to the expansion and so forth that’s in there. It’s an outrageous piece of legislation. But I did not know that was there.
CALLER: Oh, yes. And in the nation, as of this date, there’s a specialized hospital category called ‘surgical hospital.’ This history goes back a long time. We don’t have opportunity I guess really to cover that, but the upshot of it is that as of this date there are only about 135 of these specialized hospitals. And, again, this provision, which is in the S-CHIP law, or bill, will basically shut them down and make sure that no additional ones are going to be in the marketplace. So I think it’s significant.
RUSH: Tell people why it is of significance.
CALLER: Well, again, if you look at the way the Democrats see the health care market, they would to want make sure — and this includes people like Pete Stark, as well as others, who view hospitals as being owned by physicians as self-serving and in that they are able to refer to themselves in that particular scenario, because, of course, if you’re a family practice —
RUSH: Yeah, see, let’s cut to the chase. What the Democrats don’t want is anything in the private sector to be operating in health care. Ultimately, down the road, they don’t want anything in the private sector to be operating health care. They want to operate it all from Washington and from the state capitals.
CALLER: Ditto on that.
RUSH: That’s the bottom line of what they’re looking for. The way that they’re trying to sell it, is again, the class envy business by making the doctors the absolute evil and the problem in the health care business. It is outrageous what’s going to happen to doctors under Hillary Care and any other element of government-run medicine is something that needs to be looked at and imagined, because you can have all the health insurance you want, and you can have all the coverage, but if you don’t have a doctor to go to or, if you don’t have a doctor nearby to go, you don’t have a qualified doctor to go to, do you realize how worthless your medical coverage is going to be? The way these people are taking out after doctors, and already insurance companies determine a lot of medical decisions being made, that’s going to be turned over to the government in due course.
If you’re sitting there saying, ‘It’s outrageous, my insurance company is making medical decisions.’ Well, why don’t you say that about Mrs. Clinton, too, then? What qualifies her to be making medical decisions for every damn citizen in this country, or anybody she appoints to run the program, or anybody in Congress, for crying out loud? Why is it that the true professionals in this field are the ones being demonized and are being labeled as evil profiteers who don’t care about your health; they own hospitals; they refer patients to themselves and each other, kickbacks. That’s just how they’re trying to sell the concept to get private doctors not owning hospitals because they want to own ’em and run ’em eventually.