Here is how I analyzed the situation…

http://proprietornation.blogspot.com/2007/10/schip-middle-class-guilt.html

So even a compromise between the 5 Billion and 35 Billion price tags will barely hold the status quo.

If you really try to add 4 million kids to the program the end cost once you did would probably project out to somewhere north of 50 Billion over the next 5 years maybe even more.

It is the same as we have been saying all along but was lost in the noise blinder.

We sympathize with the plight of the children and willingly provide the SCHIP program for that purpose. However that does not excuse the poor long term history of choice by the adults in the family.

It was never an effort to deamonize the kids, that was the lefts false screaming point tactic, it was an effort to point out that the chosen spokesman for the left illustrated the faults with the program and if anything was an example of why the program should not be expanded into even higher income brackets.

Fifty-two percent of respondents say they have more confidence in Democrats to deal with the issue, compared with 32% for Bush.

Majorities back two positions at the core of the president’s opposition to the expansion:

• 52% agree with Bush that most benefits should go to children in families earning less than 200% of the federal poverty level — about $41,000 for a family of four. Only 40% say benefits should go to families earning up to $62,000, as the bill written by Democrats and some Republicans would allow.

• 55% are very or somewhat concerned that the program would create an incentive for families to drop private insurance. Bush and Republican opponents have called that a step toward government-run health care.

Taken together, the results show that while Bush may be losing the political battle with Democrats, he may be doing better on policy.

http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2007-10-15-poll-schip_N.htm?csp=34

If the Bush administration did not think this family deserved the help, they should not have given it to them.

They qualified. Under Bush and the Dems proposals they qualified. Any attempt to say they should not have plays into the Dems hands. Not only did they qualify they were not rich poseurs. They needed the assistance and their kids needed the medical treatments.

Move on and stop digging.

Of course, the strategy of using children as human shields in a political fight received scant attention thanks to the outburst of fake outrage on the left over anyone daring to question anything about the program. Watching them falling over each other trying to outdo one another in the level and originality of their invective for “smearing 12 year old Graeme Frost” – where no smear ever occurred anywhere at anytime by any blogger, pundit, writer, or spokesperson – actually became something of an entertainment – sort of like a bad episode of Days of our Lives where every scene was horribly melodramatic and overdone.

Exactly why those who buy into the Frost kids or even them being smeared or swiftboated are wrong. It has always been about how the Frosts got into the program from choices made long term by the “adults” in the family.

Rick Moran has a couple of new posts up today about this including the link to a politco post today with Bethany Wilkerson being touted.

You can be sure they vetted her family much better than they did the Frost family.

Moran makes an excellent point

Funny how we don’t see any poster families who are 400% above the poverty level being pushed forward as examples of the kinds of people the $35 billion expansion of S-CHIP will help. Why not? Since the original parameters of the S-CHIP program enjoys the overwhelming support of Congress and the President, why trot forward families like the Frosts and the Wilkersons who qualify under the current rules? Why not bring to the fore those families at the high end of the expansion requirements and let the American people decide if they want to subsidize insurance for them?

The answer is obvious; a family living 400% above poverty are not as sympathetic as those, like the Wilkerson’s, who couldn’t get by without S-CHIP. In fact, pushing forward people who make more than 40% of all the families in America as the poster family for S-CHIP expansion would probably torpedo the bill then and there.

I note that this time around, the Democrats were careful to push a family forward whose choices regarding health insurance couldn’t be questioned. In that respect, if they’re waiting for conservatives to attack the Wilkerson’s, they are going to be sorely disappointed. The Democrats just don’t have a clue about the true nature of the opposition to their S-CHIP expansion. For that, they would have to give a fig about the tradeoffs we make between dependency and freedom every time they get some not so bright idea about “helping” those who can usually be counted on to help themselves.

This element fits a growing Democratic-Party pattern: The use of taxes to force social change. Now, this is not the exclusive property of Democrats; consider the home mortgage interest tax deduction, the purpose of which is to get more people to buy homes instead of rent. Its origin in shrouded in mystery, but no Congress or president since, Democrat or Republican, has actually pushed for its abolition (several have talked the talk).

However, rather than use tax incentives to encourage good behavior, Democrats have made a fetish of using punitive taxation to punish behavior they don’t like, such as smoking. But not just cigarettes:

* Many Democrats (Mort Kondracke, for one) have argued in favor of huge taxes on gasoline to “force” people to drive less; similar ideas include a “gas-guzzler” tax or specifically an SUV tax.

* The proposed “carbon tax” is suppose to punish people for using energy.

* Democrats have also proposed taxes on fatty foods and transfats;

* Guns and ammunition;

* Luxuries (including the infamous yacht tax that led to a collapse of the yacht-building industry, resulting in mass layoffs of middle-income workers — and the swift repeal of the yacht tax);

* A proposed tax on houses larger than 3,000 square feet;

* And taxes on alcohol.

In each case, Democrats have proposed the tax primarily for the purpose of controlling behavior, not raising revenue. (And except for the proposed taxes on fat or transfat, these nanny-state taxes are aimed squarely at Republicans.)

Punitive, behavior-modifying taxes distort the market, thereby damaging the economy. But that’s not the worst market distortion caused by the Democrats’ proposed expansion of SCHIP.

The program was originally intended to cover the gap between children below the poverty line, who can get health-care through Medicare, and children whose families earn up to 200% of poverty (twice $21,000 per year, or $42,000) but still have a tough time paying for health insurance. But when it came up for renewal, Democrats forced through a massive expansion of the program to cover children whose families earn far above the previous ceiling — in some cases, up to four times the poverty line, or $84,000 per year — as well as covering these “children” well into their twenties. Thus, they took a program aimed at helping the working poor and transmogrified it into a new middle class entitlement program.

That is not true. I have said time and again that I do not think the program should be expanded, but since the only thing some people want to talk about is what kind of car the Frost drive who has time or energy?

This is not about growing a pair. Harassing this family takes no courage at all. It is just stupid.

What did they do wrong? Besides utilizing a program that is available to them? And so what if they came forward and said they supported the program? We have people coming forward for the snow flake babies as well as family members supporting the troops in Iraq, should those people be “exposed” by the left? Would that be right?

I am sorry, I just do not think this is tough or brave or anything like that. These people could have lost their children, whatever Dan Riehl might think of them, accusing them of pimping their kid after something like that makes him look like an ass.

How can we not insist that all of our children have healthcare?! It boggles the mind. We’re making a huge mistake if we don’t deal with our healthcare issues decisively, creatively and swiftly, and we need to get over the concept that it feels too much like socialism or federalism to tackle it as a nation as well. Healthcare is not for the back-burner, and it applies to us all. Yes, we have other pressing issues on the table, most notably, the fate of our military servicemen and women on duty in Iraq and Afghanistan and other international addresses around the world. As a country we must fight the advance of terrorism, shore up our emergency response system (as in rebuilding New Orleans), address global warming and the ongoing abuse of our environment, and we desperately need to rebuild our international relationships and friendships – and obviously, I’m skimming the top of the surface here, because there is much more. It takes enormous diplomacy and level-headed thinking to manage a country with close to 300 million people living in it, but at this juncture in our country’s lifespan – we should not still be pondering how to handle healthcare, especially as it concerns our kids. Yet here we are – with our lawmakers and our sitting President dithering over how many children to cut from healthcare rosters. There must be another solution.