When The SCHIP Hits The Fan
According to The Crypt, the Democrats are rolling out a new poster child for the SCHIP expansion they are pushing. The thing is, if they had brought this family out first, I rather doubt anyone would have blogged about them.
This week, Democrats have brought forth the Wilkerson family, whose two-year old daughter Bethany is covered by SCHIP and had life-saving heart surgery when she was an infant. On Monday the Wilkerson family held a conference call, sponsored by USAction, a liberal grassroots advocacy group lobbying in favor of the $35 billion SCHIP expansion.
For the record, the Bo and Dara Wilkerson say they make $34,000 in combined income from restaurant jobs in St. Petersburg, Fla. They rent their house and the couple owns one car, which Bo calls "a junker." Malkin and other bloggers have revealed over the past week that the Frost family owned two properties, as well as a couple cars, and had a $45,000 income. The accusation against Democrats, and by extension the Frost family, is that they are too middle class to be granted any subsidized health insurance for their children.
The Wilkersons said they are fully aware of the possibility that their finances and personal lives may be investigated by opponents of the SCHIP bill.
Nonsense. They are exactly the people that SCHIP was meant to cover in the first place. There is not one conservative that I am aware of who would raise any questions about this family or their circumstances. These are the "working poor" the program targeted - correctly. The ruckus was over another family that by any reasonable standard is not poor. The Democrats either foolishly put that family out as their "human face" or did so intentionally to cause the ruckus. Either way, the Frost family was ill used by the Democrats.
But they are lumping the middle class in with the real working poor and blurring the debate. They are conflating two very, very different groups and are at risk of losing substantial ground with both of those groups with this ploy. Those who really are among the working poor can rightfully point to the expansion into the middle class of benefits as making it less likely a hand will be there for them when they need it. The middle class will resent being called poor after working to get to where they are.
The real debate that the Democrats deflected criticism from here with their stupid or cynical actions is whether SCHIP should be expanded to the middle class - which I and a lot of others see as pushing socialized medicine in - and how is this massive expansion really going to be paid for. The disingenuous taxation scheme the Democrats are pushing unfairly targets those least able to pay those taxes. They know that the demographics of smokers are such that a large percentage are lower income and less educated. The Democrats know that and are smugly elitist about it. "Well," they sniff, "They shouldn't be smoking at all." So if the revenue falls - and it will - who pays for all this?
Answer: The rest of us. SCHIP expansion won't be as popular then, but by then it will be too late.
UPDATE: Others: Rick Moran: "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."
Bruce Kesler: "I’d also phoned Medi-Cal (California’s Medicaid), targeting the truly poor, and found it does have a, perhaps overstrict, asset test: no more than $3000 of personal assets (including car and cash accounts). Wouldn’t the extra SCHIP funding be better spent on the truly needy. Or, do the Dems already discount that reliable voter bloc in their quest for middle-class voters who also want to be on the dole?"
Callimachus: "But there is a vast difference in the minds of middle-class Americans. You start telling them they're in the same situation as the poor, and you're going to lose them real fast. Which is how the Democrats tend to do it."
McQ: "So other than emotional appeal and an attempt to pretend the Wilkersons are the sort of family the fight is about when it is not, why are we seeing the Wilkersons at all?"
Jeff Goldstein: "The entire dustup over SCHIP has never been about the Frost family — except insofar as cynical Dems were willing to use an injured child already covered by the program as an emotional beard to demand an increase that would cover those making close to twice as much as the boy’s family."
Wide Open: "The central market-driven core of the health system is under incremental attack. and we need to defend it with ideas and answers, not by questioning the hard-luck cases."
Right Voices: "Before the bill was vetoed, it was set up for failure. Smoking is not on the rise. As a smoker,I say great! I wish I was a non-smoker. Even with the increased tax, you still fall millions short of coming close to funding the program."
Hot Air: "Can’t the Democrats find anyone who doesn’t qualify for SCHIP? And if they can’t, what does that say about the program or the scale of the proposed expansions of it?"
By Mwalimu Daudi, Monday, 15 October , 2007 @ 5:10 pm
[The Wilkersons] are exactly the people that SCHIP was meant to cover in the first place. There is not one conservative that I am aware of who would raise any questions about this family or their circumstances.
Wait a minute! I make almost $10,000 a year less than the Wilkersons (I am the sole support for my wife and baby). I work two jobs while my wife is on scholarship at a university. Yet I am able to buy health insurance for my family. Why can’t the Wilkerson do the same? By my standards they are fabulously wealthy - far wealthier than we are.
Gaius, I am being taxed to raise their higher standard of living while ours goes down. The Wilkersons - and USAction, which hold their leash - are nothing more than a bunch of hypocritical leeches. They should be exposed as such.
I’m not P.O.d at you, Gaius, I am just tired of the same hypocritical lying MSM/DNC b***s**t being shoveled out again. USAction views poor people the way a pimp views a prostitute - as a free meal ticket. The Wilkersons are scum for going along with the fraud.
By Gaius, Monday, 15 October , 2007 @ 5:20 pm
So write a post explaining all that and I’ll post it for you, Mwalimu. The only thing I ask is that you not violate the policies - you’ve been around here long enough to know where the lines are.
By Mwalimu Daudi, Tuesday, 16 October , 2007 @ 5:26 am
I sent a lengthy reply to your post, but it appears that the Internet gods devoured it. Probably just as well.
By Gaius, Tuesday, 16 October , 2007 @ 8:00 am
I lost that comment and a few others with the software problems last night. If you can resend it, I’ll get it posted.
By Uncle Pinky, Tuesday, 16 October , 2007 @ 8:45 am
I’ve worked in a whole passle of restaurant jobs, and what gets reported to the IRS rarely comports with one’s take-away. There are some places that automatically report tips, but plenty of others that simply report the $2.15/hour or what have you. That has created difficulties, for many of my compatriots, in securing lines of credit or rental approval. I sincerely hope that the Wilkerson family continues to recieve the help that they need, but why set themseves up for scrutiny? I also hope they find better paying jobs, for Bethany’s sake.
By Mwalimu Daudi, Tuesday, 16 October , 2007 @ 9:58 am
Well, I will boil it down to a few sentences. My wife is a legal immigrant from Africa, and as part of getting her I551 (”green card”) we had to forego receiving public assistance like SCHIP. Fine - the law is the law, and we choose to obey it.
But there is something strange about the fact that I make far less than they do, yet I can provide health insurance for my family while they cannot. Worse still - as you and others have pointed out the Wilkersons already qualify for SCHIP. So what is their beef? Are they demanding more?
Here is the situation that gets my goat - I am being taxed to support their standard of living even though I make far less than they do (I have a wife and a toddler to think about, which is why I work two jobs for a total of roughly 60 hours per week). Compared to my salary, Bo Wilkerson’s $34,000 makes him look like Bill Gates!
As a card-carrying member of the working poor, I can assure you that there are a certain percentage of us who will always try to live on the backs of others.