Two Videos on Bush's healthcare veto

[AlwaysBurning]

I got these in my inbox this week, both are videos commenting on the healthcare funding that president Bush cut despite congress and the country being in favor of its continuance: This one is from Families USA and this one The Daily Show. Any more news on this? I'm not sure what to think, really, Bush is so inconsistent in his pretense at conservatism.

[Bluesman]

You have definitely misunderstood the story, as the media hoped you would. Bush did not cut healthcare funding.

[wkllaw]

Bush didn't stop its continuance, he simply stopped the expansion of the program to include richer kids. While the kids aren't rich or upper middle class, they still aren't in poverty or in a desperate situation.

Its interesting to note that when I talk to my American friends, they seem to think of the issue the same way you do. Unfortunately, not many people do the research into these issues and just buy in to what the media says.

[Julie]

Here is a good chart for comparison of old bill and proposed bill:

http://www.ncsl.org/print/health/CHI...BIPARTBILL.pdf
another good link:

http://www.ncsl.org/print/health/forum/SCHIPFAQ.pdf

Past, present and future:

http://www.cmwf.org/usr_doc/991_Lamb...ent_future.pdf

[gunnut]

Originally Posted by Julie

Past, present and future:

http://www.cmwf.org/usr_doc/991_Lamb...ent_future.pdf

This document actually had definitions of what the bill would cover.

SCHIP's purpose is "to provide child health assistance to uninsured, low-income in an effective and efficient manner." (pg. 13)

That sounds very noble, until you read about the definition of what "low-income" and "child" is under the current law. "Low-income" is defined as a family of 4 earning less than 200% of federal poverty level (currently $40,000). A "child" is someone 19 years of age or younger.

Can a family of 4 making $40,000 really be classified as "low-income?"

Can someone who can join the army and vote really be classified as a "child?"

On page 17, the future of the law wants to include insurance for illegal children in this country. It also wants to expand coverage to children who already have insurance (WTF?). And the program wants to include children from higher income families as well.

Bush did not cut health care to children. Bush did not cut health care for low income children.

Bush vetoed a bill that wants to provide health care to high income families, adults, and illegals.

As they say, the devil is in the details.

[Ironduke]

Can a family of 4 making $40,000 really be classified as "low-income?"

I don't know about poor, but it's a working class income.

[gunnut]

Originally Posted by Ironduke

I don't know about poor, but it's a working class income.

I guess that will depend on where the family is located. If they live at places like San Francisco or New York or Orange County, they are low income. Other places in the midwest can get by quite well on $40,000 a year.

But we have to agree on one thing, doesn't matter where, $80,000 is definitely not poor, not even low income except in a select few places like downtown Manhattan or Beverly Hills.

[Bluesman]

It was nothing more than a naked attempt to make yet another middle-class entitlement program, because the Democrats know that once you start it, it canNOT be killed. This was a way to maneuver Bush into starting what would eventually becoming the complete and total control of all healthcare by federal authority.

But they thought their win/win proposition would force Bush to choose between getting the Julies of the world pissed off and NEVER FORGIVING him for 'vetoing children's health care', or going along with this horrendous first step in a massive expansion of federal power.

He shot 'em down, and made 'em pay their own price, though. Good for HIM.

[gunnut]

There is nothing more permanant than a temperary government program.

[Julie]

Originally Posted by Bluesman

or going along with this horrendous first step in a massive expansion of federal power.

I'm not believing you said that.

[Bluesman]

Originally Posted by Julie

I'm not believing you said that.

That's because you have no power of perception.

Check THIS out.

[Bluesman]

Still a proud Democrat?

[Julie]

Originally Posted by Bluesman

Still a proud Democrat?

Okay, that particular family could afford $1,200 per month health insurance for a family of 4, and put their children in public school as opposed to private school.

How many families of 4 making a legitimately gross $40,000 income, approx. $35,000 net, approx. $675.00/week, pay a mortgage, a car payment, car insurance, utilities, food, and clothing for four people, and still afford the above health insurance premium for 4 people, with their children being in public school?

[Bluesman]

Originally Posted by Julie

Okay, that particular family could afford $1,200 per month health insurance for a family of 4, and put their children in public school as opposed to private school.

How many families of 4 making a legitimately gross $40,000 income, approx. $35,000 net, approx. $675.00/week, pay a mortgage, a car payment, car insurance, utilities, food, and clothing for four people, and still afford the above health insurance premium for 4 people, with their children being in public school?

And how many of them did the Democrats trot out to make their points against Bush's alternative?

Sigh. Once again, you missed the point. I wasn't saying there was nobody in America that wouldn't happliy use somebody else's money to pay their own bills; of course there is, so you pointing it out has absolutely no relevence. The point I was making, and am now taking great pains to explicity point out to you, was that the Democrats are LIARS. The 12-year old they sought out and used and exploited was upp-middle class, BUT, and this is all they ever cared about, not TRUTH...he was telegenic. He was a great salesman for their snake oil.

So, then...STILL a proud Democrat?

[Bluesman]

Holy CRAP, Julie, you may want to get the intellectual bandaids and bactine out for this one, because you're about to take a brutal whippin':

The new poor [Mark Steyn]


Over the weekend, I posted a couple of things re Graeme Frost, the Democratic Party's 12-year old healthcare spokesman. Michelle Malkin reports that the blogospheric lefties are all steamed about the wingnuts' Swiftboating of sick kids, etc.

Sorry, no sale. The Democrats chose to outsource their airtime to a Seventh Grader. If a political party is desperate enough to send a boy to do a man's job, then the boy is fair game. As it is, the Dems do enough cynical and opportunist hiding behind biography and identity, and it's incredibly tedious. And anytime I send my seven-year-old out to argue policy you're welcome to clobber him, too. The alternative is a world in which genuine debate is ended and, as happened with Master Frost, politics dwindles down to professional staffers writing scripts to be mouthed by Equity moppets.

But one thing is clear by now: Whatever the truth about this boy's private school, his family home, his father's commercial property, etc, the Frosts are a very particular situation and do not illustrate any social generality - and certainly not one that makes the case for an expensive expansive all-but universal entitlement.

A more basic point is made very robustly by Kathy Shaidle: Advanced western democracies have delivered the most prosperous societies in human history. There simply are no longer genuinely "poor" people in sufficient numbers. As Miss Shaidle points out, if you're poor today, it's almost always for behavioral reasons - behavior which the state chooses not to discourage but to reward. Nonetheless, progressive types persist in deluding themselves that there are vast masses of the "needy" out there that only the government can rescue. An editorial in Canada's biggest-selling newspaper today states:

The population of Toronto is about two-and-a-half million. Is the Star suggesting one in three citizens of one of the wealthiest municipalities on earth depends on "food banks"? Or is it the same one thousand people getting three square meals a day there? Or ten thousand people swinging by a couple of times a week? And, in that case, how many of them actually "depend" on food banks? Only the Star knows. But the idea that 905,000 Torontonians need food aid is innumerate bunk.

So, in the absence of real need, we've persuaded ourselves that we need to create more and more programs for the middle-class and wealthy. Several correspondents have written to scoff at the idea that the Frosts are wealthy, citing family friends who suggest the grandparents chip in for the private-school fees.

But hang on. That's as it should be. That's the kind of healthy transgenerational solidarity without which no society can survive (see Europe). Graeme Frost's maternal grandfather died last December, and The Baltimore Sun reported:

So executive vice-presidents' families are now the new new poor? I support lower taxes for the Frosts, increased child credits for the Frosts, an end to the "death tax" and other encroachments on transgenerational wealth transfer, and even severe catastrophic medical-emergency aid of one form or other. But there is no reason to put more and more middle-class families on the government teat, and doing so is deeply corrosive of liberty.

And, if the Democrats don't like me saying that, next time put up someone in long pants to make your case.

[UPDATE: Mister Innumerate, heal thyself. The population of the "Greater Toronto Area" - rather than the city itself - is, in fact, about five million. A reader writes:

Er, yes, it is. One in six people in the Greater Toronto Area visited a food bank? At the very trough of the Depression, one in four American workers was unemployed and the lines at the soup kitchens snaked down the streets. If one in six Torontonians needed food from food banks, you'd notice it.]


10/08 07:24 PM