Wall Street Journal Wing Assault On SCHIP Family Is Bogus

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Even Right-Wing Wall Street Journal Edit Page Says Wingnut Assault On SCHIP Family Is Bogus
October 14, 2007 -- 11:23 AM EST // //
You'd think this would be chastening to the wingnuts who are tormenting the family of SCHIP poster kid Graeme Frost. But of course it isn't, because nothing ever is.

As you all know, the winger bloggers have been mounting a smear campaign against the Frost family that is extraordinarily base even by their nonexistent standards. They did this after Congressional Dems chose young Graeme as a spokesboy on the SCHIP expansion issue. Frost, who was injured in a car crash, delivered an address on the program several weeks ago saying that the program was funding his medical care, prompting the wingers to launch an all-out effort to paint the Frosts as insufficiently needy.


But again and again their assaults on the family have proven to be bogus by that inconvenient and nettlesome intruder known as "reality."


Now their campaign has sunk to such a comically low level that even the conservative Wall Street Journal editorial page, which opposes the SCHIP expansion, has come out with a new opinion piece denouncing the wingers as an "Internet mob" that is hopelessly wrong on the facts.


WSJ says the false winger attacks are actually helping the Dems, adding:

Despite their howls about "the children," Democrats and their media partners are happy to milk them for political gain.

Unfortunately, that narrative was bolstered this week by some conservative bloggers. After the Schip veto, Democrats chose a 12-year-old boy named Graeme Frost to deliver a two-minute rebuttal. While that was a political stunt, the Washington habit of employing "poster children" is hardly new. But the Internet mob leapt to some dubious conclusions and claimed the Frost kids shouldn't have been on Schip in the first place.


As it turns out, they belonged to just the sort of family that a modest Schip is supposed to help.

Yep. When even the chronically dishonest WSJ editorial page denounces you for dishonesty on an issue it more or less agrees with you about, you're pretty far around the bend. The wingnuts, needless to say, remain unrepentant, howling away as always at illusions and mirages of their own making.

Hopefully the program will work better than MediCal (Medicaid). Even if one qualifies in spades for that program, it's impossible to locate a doctor who'll accept it. When my daughter was in diapers I phoned literally every single medical office in our phone book (San Diego, California) and found only one doctor that was accepting new MediCal patients. The wait was going to be four months before her severe ear infection would be looked at. So, I hope they work the program from that end, if it flies at all.

It's almost as bad as Section 8 Housing vouchers here. There are 40,000 people on the waiting list, and once you get one you find out that nobody'll rent to you because even with the government subsidy, you won't be able to cover the market rent.

Don't be poor. Just don't be poor, even if it's through medical mishap, accident of birth, or alignment of the stars. You'll end up dieing alone in a gutter.