Editorial: Trashing a 12-year-old

Monday, Oct. 15, 2007 | 7:22 a.m.

Graeme Frost, 12, has landed in the center of the ugly battle over the expansion of a children's health insurance program and President Bush's recent veto of the plan.

The boy, who spoke last month in the Democratic response to the president's weekly radio address, has become the poster child of the State Children's Health Insurance Program - and a target of vicious right-wing attacks.

Democrats note that he is exactly the type of child who would be covered under their proposed expansion. His parents make between $45,000 and $50,000 a year - too much to be eligible for Medicaid - and live in a home in a modest Baltimore neighborhood that they bought in 1990. Both work, but neither have health insurance. Private insurance companies have either denied them coverage or quoted prices that cost about 30 percent of their gross wages.

Graeme and his siblings were on the State Children's Health Insurance Program when the family's SUV hit a patch of black ice in 2004 and crashed. He was in a coma for a week and one of his vocal chords was paralyzed. His sister suffered more serious brain injuries.

The Frosts are the kind of family this program should include. In the radio address, Graeme urged Bush to approve the program, which has received bipartisan support. Since then the boy and his family have been attacked with a level of meanness that makes even cynical political veterans cringe.

One right-wing blogger suggested that Graeme's father, Halsey Frost, get a "real job," instead of welding and wood working to make a living. Others falsely paint the Frosts as a well-to-do family soaking up government aid.

Lying about and vilifying a 12-year-old who was nearly killed in a car crash is despicable, and Republicans should join Democrats in condemning those attacks. Then they should vote to override the president's veto. Failing to do so will endanger hundreds of thousands of children, which would be par for the course for those who think nothing of using the politics of personal destruction against a little boy.