The Baltimore Sun fills in the blanks more.

He’s a self-employed woodworker without employees; she works part time for a medical publishing firm. Their income ranges from $45K to $50K. Anyone self-employed can tell you about the higher quarterly withholdings required, mostly for Social Security.

Their four kids get financial aid to attend private school. The injured girl gets money from the city for special education because of her injuries.

The family home cost $55,000 in 1990, and was refinanced in 2005 to add features to accommodate the injured kids needs when they left the hospital. The house is currently assessed at $263,140.

They bought a commercial rental - a 1920 warehouse - for $160,000 in 1999. It’s currently assessed at $160,500. They’re still paying off the mortgages on both.

Thus, while equity is accruing in their assets, it’s idle speculation to guess what they’d have left if both properties were sold and both mortgages were paid off. If they subsequently became renters, finding a home for 6 with features to serve their disabled kids would not be easy and without further equity, their likelihood of getting ahead to cover future costs of things like college for the kids would be gone.

Mrs. Frost says current medical coverage would cost $1200 per month or $14,400 per year, leaving no more than $35,600 of their gross income for all their other expenses. The cost of living in East Baltimore is a little higher than Sacramento, CA or Houston, TX, and considerably higher than Eugene, OR or Des Moines, IA.

It becomes clearer why they found health insurance unaffordable. But let’s consider what the family has already been through:

Bonnie Frost was driving children Zeke, Graeme and Gemma in Baltimore County in December 2004 when the family SUV hit a patch of black ice and slammed into a tree. Graeme sustained a brain stem injury; Gemma suffered a cranial fracture.

The family relied on SCHIP during the more than five months that the children were hospitalized. Graeme had to learn again to walk and talk, his parents say; he remains weak on his left side and speaks with a lisp. Gemma is blind in her left eye; she has difficulty with memory, learning and speech, and sees a behavioral psychologist to help her deal with her frustration.

“Her personality has changed,” Bonnie Frost said yesterday. “She’s not the same girl.”

And how did this family get treated by online critics?

Redstate:

“If federal funds were required [they] could die for all I care. Let the parents get second jobs, let their state foot the bill or let them seek help from private charities. … I would hire a team of PIs and find out exactly how much their parents made and where they spent every nickel. Then I’d do everything possible to destroy their lives with that info.”

and:

“Hang ‘em. Publically,” the contributor wrote. “Let ‘em twist in the wind and be eaten by ravens. Then maybe the bunch of socialist patsies will think twice.

Two conservatives:

Malkin wrote that the Democrats’ use of Graeme Frost to deliver the radio address was “poster child abuse”; Limbaugh told listeners that Democrats had “filled this kid’s head with lies.”

You can go to numerous sites mentioned in previous posts here, at Balloon Juice, Sadly, No! and elsewhere to discover equally vile examples. How would you like your kids to spend 5 months in the hospital, emerge with permanent disabilities, then have to hear that?

The anti-healthy kids crowd insists this type of discourse is legitimate because the 12 year old spoke out, yet the transcript and video shows his criticism of Bush was very muted and he mainly appealed for more help for more children rather than attack.

How did they get involved?

The Frosts joined the debate through family acquaintance Vinnie DeMarco, the president of the Maryland Citizens’ Health Initiative. DeMarco introduced them to the pro-SCHIP organization Families USA, which put them in touch with Pelosi’s office.

And what do they think now?

“It’s really frustrating,” said Bonnie Frost, 41, who stated she is upset by the angry Internet posts, e-mails and telephone calls targeting the family. “The whole point of it for me was that this program helped my family, and I wanted it to help others. That’s the message, and I can’t believe the way the spotlight has been taken off of that.”

“It’s a distractive technique,” said Halsey Frost, also 41. Speaking from their cluttered front room yesterday, the Frosts said they would continue to advocate for government-funded health care.

Good points. The issue still is not the Frosts. It’s whether 4 million kids gain health coverage at a cost that averages $7 billion per year. That’s what we spend on the Iraq War in 3-1/2 weeks.

And I’m glad to hear the Frosts don’t intend to withdraw from the debate. It indicates they don’t have anything hidden in the closet. And they’re willing to stand up to the bullies trying to shield the GOP and Bush from their refusal to address the public clamor for affordable health care, which has the support of nearly 7 out of 10 Americans.

If the bullies have an alternative to the band-aid approach the S-Chip bill offers, let’s hear about it. So far, all I hear is ‘we can’t’ and ‘we shouldn’t ‘ which has never been the American way.
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