Thread: BEDFORD: This Democratic Senate wannabe just picked a fight with a mother who has can

Opinion

BEDFORD: This Democratic Senate wannabe just picked a fight with a mother who has cancer [video]

1:28 PM 02/22/2014
Christopher Bedford
Managing Editor

Last week, The Washington Post began grumbling about an Americans for Prosperity (AFP) ad featuring Julie Boonstra, a woman with leukemia who was thrown into expensive uncertainty by Obamacare, with Greg Sargent lamenting the tragedy of its effectiveness and Glenn Kessler asking for more proof. (BEDFORD: The Post is pretty worried about the people Obamacare hurts)

Then Rep. Gary Peters, who is the running for the U.S. Senate in Michigan, went all-in Friday, having his lawyers send a letter to a Michigan television station citing the Post in demanding that AFP provide more evidence that Obamacare is as terrible as it really is. Mr. Peters’ lawyers wrote that “Unlike federal candidates, independent political organizations” — and by extension, Ms. Boonstra — don’t have a “right to command use of broadcast facilities.” They clinched with a threat that airing the ad could “be cause for the loss of a station’s license.”

Big guns, Mr. Peters. Big guns.

But damn, what a bonehead.



In politics, and in political advertising, folks play hardball with their words. It’s important to dodge big hits and counter artfully. In the case of a woman stricken with cancer and thrown of her healthcare plan because of a bill Mr. Peters voted to pass, the artfulness of the counter is particularly important. But instead, Mr. Peters chose to charge in full-force.

Mr. Peters will almost certainly be shown wrong. But even if he isn’t, what are the optics of all this?

Let’s lay them out: Mr. Peters goes to Washington and votes for Obamacare. Because of this, back home, Ms. Boonstra, a mother who was given a 20 percent chance of surviving her cancer, looses her health insurance. It takes her two uncertain, sleep-deprived months to replace her plan, with Obamacare delaying every step of the way through its broken website, weeks of snail-mail delays and days of backed up phone lines. Ms. Boostra finally ended up with a plan she doesn’t think is even comparable to the security of her old plan. And when she told her story, Mr. Peters, the politician who wants to be her senator — and represent her in Washington — sicced his lawyers on her, questioning her trials and, in a page right out of Richard Nixon’s playbook, threatening the license of the station that dared to air it. (BEDFORD: The (real) life of Julie)

Oh, and get this: In November, Mr. Peters is likely to face off against another mother,Republican Terri Lynn Land.

We’d wish him good luck, but we wouldn’t mean it.

http://dailycaller.com/2014/02/22/bedford-this-democratic-senate-wannabe-just-picked-a-fight-with-a-mother-who-has-cancer-video/

Cancer, Obamacare Victim at Center of Political Storm

Democrats attack Michigan cancer victim after being featured in political ad

Gary Peters (AP)

BY: Adam Kredo Follow @Kredo0
February 22, 2014 5:45 pm

Julie Boonstra, a cancer patient who was kicked of off her health plan due to Obamacare, lashed out at Rep. Gary Peters (D., Mich.) on Saturday after lawyers for his campaign demanded that Michigan broadcasters cease airing ads featuring her story.

Boonstra, a Michigan resident, was diagnosed with leukemia five years ago. She was recently kicked off of her healthcare plan due to regulations passed as part of President Barack Obama’s Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, which Peters voted in favor of.

After relating her story publicly in an ad produced by the advocacy group Americans for Prosperity (AFP), Peters dispatched lawyers to prevent the spot from running on local television stations.

Boonstra, who says she is now struggling to pay out of pocket for her rising healthcare costs, told the Washington Free Beacon she is stunned by Peters’ efforts to censor her story.

“I’m appalled. I’m appalled as a mom, as a woman, and as a cancer patient, as someone living with cancer … who has stood before this nation to say, ‘I cannot afford that out of pocket expense,’” said Boonstra, who said she was given a 20 percent chance of surviving her disease. “As a Michigan resident, to silence my voice, I’m absolutely appalled.”

Peters, who is running for a seat in the Senate, instructed his legal council earlier this week to demand that stations stop running the AFP ad until additional evidence of the cancer victim’s claims could be produced.

“For the sake of both FCC licensing requirements and the public interest, your station should immediately require AFP to provide the factual documentation for its claims if you are going to continue airing this advertising,” read the letter from Peters’ lawyers.

The letter went on to question Boonstra’s motives and the facts presented in AFP’s ad.

Boonstra said she is “surprised” by what she described as the Peters campaign’s strong-arm tactics.

“I’m very surprised,” Boonstra said just hour after she attempted to confront Peter face-to-face at his Bloomfield Hills residence. “I have every right to tell my story and express my point of view and opinion on how Obamacare has effected me.”

Boonstra attempted to confront the congressman at his door, but he did not answer when she knocked.

“I just went up to his house and knocked on his door,” Boonstra recalled. “I would like to meet with him, but he did not answer. I know someone was home, so I left a letter there for him.”

Boonstra wrote in her letter, “I don’t understand why you’re trying to silence my voice. I have every right to speak out and don’t understand why you’re doing this.”

A spokesman for the Peters campaign did not respond to a request for comment on the matter.

“The fact that Representative Peters would sic his legal team on a Michigan mother battling cancer to muzzle her tells you everything you need to know about his record of putting politics over people,” AFP-Michigan State Director Scott Hagerstrom said in a statement.

“This attack on her credibility is disgusting, unwarranted, and inexcusable,” Hagerstrom said. “Congressman Peters and his indecent campaign team should be ashamed of themselves.”

Asked what she would say to Obama were she given the chance, Boonstra responded: “This law has not benefited him. I know there are some people out there who wanted to believe that. I have not seen the benefits so far.”

“This [law] is hurting me,” she continued. “I thought the intention was to help and it’s not. I’m angry [Obama] lied to me. He told me I could keep my healthcare plan and that was very untrue. I just want it to be clear that I have every right to tell my story.”

http://freebeacon.com/cancer-obamaca...litical-storm/

Just for the heck of it here's MSNBC's view:

The most misleading anti-Obamacare ad yet?

02/21/14 12:30 PM—UPDATED 02/22/14 03:05 PM

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By Benjy Sarlin
It’s an explosive claim. A woman diagnosed with lieukemia recounts how, thanks to Obamacare, her insurance was canceled and the cost of her life-saving treatments are now “so high, it’s unaffordable.”
“If I do not receive my medication,” she says. “I will die.”
The ad, targeting Michigan Democratic Senate candidate Gary Peters, comes from Americans For Prosperity, a conservative advocacy group backed by the Koch brothers. The woman featured in the campaign, Julie Boonstra, is not an actress, and her story is real. But when it comes to the claim that Obamacare has increased her bills, let alone threatened her life, there’s a chasm-sized gap between the horror story and the information available about her medical situation.



In this case, the problem with the ad is basic math. In an interview with The Detroit News in January, before the ad ran, Boonstra told the paper that her plan was canceled because of Obamacare, something that has indeed happened to many Americans whose private coverage did not meet minimum standards set by the law. But, just like any American whose plan was canceled, Boonstra is able to look for a replacement plan through the law’s subsidized insurance exchanges, which are not allowed to turn anyone away based on a pre-existing condition. And according to Boonstra, she not only found coverage, but a Blue Cross plan that cut her premiums in half – from $1,100 a month to $571 a month. She’s still seeing the same doctor she had before.
So, what’s the problem? According to Boonstra, she now pays higher out-of-pocket costs thanks to a higher deductible on her insurance. This is where things get start going off the rails.
The highest out-of-pocket cost legally allowed under Obamacare is $6,350 for an individual person, after which insurance covers the rest. Boonstra, by her own account, is saving at least $6,348 a year on her premiums. Even assuming her previous plan had zero out-of-pocket costs, she should, at the very least, be breaking even, in addition to benefitting from new features under the law, like an end to lifetime limits on the amount insurance companies would cover, an end to discrimination over pre-existing conditions, and new restrictions on the amount companies can charge based on age or gender. All benefits that would seem especially useful to a patient like Boonstra.
None of this is to diminish Boonstra’s clear frustration switching to a new plan during a health crisis and dealing with new rules and limits. But those problems are about a million miles away from AFP’s implication that the law is actually threatening her cancer treatment or that it “jeapordized my health,” as she put it in the ad. Especially given that the ad, unlike AFP’s press release on it, doesn’t even directly mention that she obtained new coverage under the law, instead teasing the possibility that she’s facing higher out-of-pocket costs because she doesn’t have new health insurance.
A spokesman for AFP did not respond to requests for more information from msnbc on Thursday. But the group did talk to Glenn Kessler, who writes the Washington Post’s Fact Checker blog, noticed the discrepancy, too, and awarded the ad “Two Pinnochios” on Friday.




POLITICSNATION WITH AL SHARPTON, 2/20/14, 7:35 PM ET
Obamacare complainer ad gets fact-checked


When AFP spokesman Levi Russell elaborated on the ad to Kessler, the charge quickly became less horrifying than “Obamacare Threatens To Bankrupt Cancer Patient.” Instead, Russell just said Boonstra’s cost schedule is different and she’s having trouble adjusting to the new plan.
“Julie’s concerns about her new plan are ongoing and very personal. Since her out of pocket costs are so much higher now, her costs have quickly become unpredictable,” Russell told Kessler. “Rather than knowing exactly what she would have to pay every month, she now is facing a roller coaster of expenses that vary with her health. She said she feels like a surprise is around every corner, since she keeps being hit with new out-of-pocket costs every time she needs treatment, or a test, or even an office visit.”
AFP also gave the Post a quote from Boonstra confirming that her premiums are half, “but the out‑of‑pocket costs are so high that for me, it’s unaffordable. My coverage is 80/20. Blood work, I’m paying 20 percent. If I needed a bone marrow transplant, I would only be covered 80 percent. Everything, everything I do now, I have to pay a percentage of.”
Again, that sounds like a frustrating day-to-day experience, but AFP and Boonstra don’t deny that the maximum amount insurance companies are allowed to charge her or any individual per year, under any circumstances, full stop, period, is the same as her total savings. Given that AFP can’t seem to substantiate the claim that she’s paying more at all, let alone so much that she’s in danger of losing her care, the ad looks like one of the most outrageously misleading yet.
Poll: Do you find this ad misleading?

http://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/the-most-misleading-anti-obamacare-ad-yet




What do you think?

Do you find this ad misleading?

62 votes

YesNo

Michigan Republicans, if you do not hound Peters ceaselessly until election day with this story, you are fools beyond words. There is no other issue to talk about, no other discussion other that Obama Care's disastrous hurt done to this woman and Peters' despicable efforts to silence her. Obama Care, Peters and the suffering of Julie Boonstra ARE THE ISSUE. They are the whole campaign message (perhaps a few short words about other things just to make the campaign appear to be about the issues).

The only way Peters can win is if he can prevent this story from becoming common knowledge. So what Michigan Republicans need to do is obvious: get that story out by every means possible, if it becomes necessary to stand on street corners with bull horns and put flyers on car windshields and on the doors of houses and post to social media and every blog. MOVE HEAVEN AND EARTH BUT MAKE THAT STORY COMMON KNOWLEDGE TO EVERYONE WHO IS NOT UNCONSCIOUS.

Of course the Democrats will try to nullify the story with lies and distortions and spin, but I guarantee you a cynical public is not going to believe them. Don't let them distract you into debating technicalities, numbers, people or motives, etc. STICK TO A SIMPLE, CONCISE, CORE STORY ABOUT THIS WOMANS FEAR AND SUFFERING AND KEEP REPEATING IT. PETERS EFFORTS TO STOP THE ADS FROM APPEARING ON LOCAL TV SHOULD BECOME A CAMPAIGN ISSUE AS WELL-- WHAT KIND OF DISPICABLE MAN WOULD DO SHCH A THING? THE PUBLIC WILL BELIEVE THAT PETERS IS AFRAID OF THE TRUTH AND THAT IS HIS REASON FOR TRYING TO SUPRESS THE ADS.
The only way the Republicans can loose this election is if they allow the Democrats to distracted them with endless debate about minutia that the public will not understand nor remember, or if the Republicans are just too lazy to spread their message far and wide.

From the MSNBC article.

Boonstra, she not only found coverage, but a Blue Cross plan that cut her premiums in half – from $1,100 a month to $571 a month. She’s still seeing the same doctor she had before.
So, what’s the problem? According to Boonstra, she now pays higher out-of-pocket costs thanks to a higher deductible on her insurance. This is where things get start going off the rails.

The highest out-of-pocket cost legally allowed under Obamacare is $6,350 for an individual person, after which insurance covers the rest. Boonstra, by her own account, is saving at least $6,348 a year on her premiums

The problem that I see is that her deductibles have to be paid first and depending on her treatment, she could wind up with a $571.00 premium and 2-3 thousand in charges in any given month which forces her to pay the majority of the costs up front. What she had was a payment of 1,100.00 per month with no surprises.
This article basically says that she is complaining about nothing because her insurance cost the same as it did BEFORE Obamacare. So, what happened to "lowering the COST of insurance? As far as I can tell, all Obamacare did was change the way the payment is structured and lower the PREMUIM not the cost of the insurance.

Obama and his cheerleaders waffle between saying They will lower premiums and that they will lower costs . Looks like the set up for the "quibble was only talking about premiums instead of overall costs.
What happened to this?