"Oh, but we can't AFFORD health insurance"

"We're innocent victims of our oppressive society! We need more SCHIP!"

Noteworthy:


"The children attend the private Park School, where tuition is $20,000 a year each. Maybe that is subsidized. Interesting that public schools aren’t good enough for their kids but public health insurance is."

Mark Steyn digs a little deeper.

Key point:

"Bad things happen to good people, and they cause financial problems and tough choices. But, if this is the face of the "needy" in America, then no-one is not needy. And, if everyone needs assistance from the federal government, so be it. But I don't think I want to drive down the road where Bonnie Frost wants to take us - because at the end of it there are no free-born citizens, just a nation where everyone is a ward of the state."

Captain Ed has more:

"So what this amounts to is a school voucher system for the middle class. The Frosts can affort to spend $20,000 per year on private-school tuition because they don't have to spend money on health insurance for their children. That allows them a better break than urban students get, because under S-CHIP as it was originally conceived, the health insurance subsidies allowed the family to spend money on frivolities like food and utilities.

This demonstrates the absurdity of expanding programs like S-CHIP into the middle class. Children in homes like the Frost's don't lack insurance coverage out of a lack of opportunity or resources, but from the choices made by their parents. Freedom entails making choices and living with the consequences. It certainly doesn't entail subsidizing poor decisions, or in this particular case, taking money from primarily lower-income workers who smoke to subsidize health insurance for kids who go to expensive private schools.

If we had school vouchers, the Frosts could afford both private education and health care, because their tax dollars would not go to the education monopoly owned by the government. It would also allow poorer families to have access to the kind of private education that the Frost children receive, forcing public schools to improve to meet the competition. The same holds true for the coming monopoly in health care, if the Democrats who support this Trojan horse S-CHIP expansion get their way."