Apparently it’s not enough to use the IRS and FCC to shut down the opposition.
What does an aspiring democrat Senator wannabe do when he doesn’t like an opposition TV ad?
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kpjyr1x7mC0[/youtube]
Attack the woman cancer victim in the ad, and then threaten to take the station off the air.
While Julie Boonstra of Dexter, Mich., struggles to survive leukemia, she now also has to cope with being called a liar by the Democrat who wants to be her next senator.
And the campaign of Rep. Gary Peters is also going after television stations airing ads in which her story is featured, threatening their licenses.
The ad by Americans for Prosperity features Boonstra talking about how her insurance was canceled under Obamacare and saying that Peters’ decision to vote for the law “jeopardized my health.” The ads are airing in Michigan as Peters seeks the Democratic nomination to replace Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., who is not seeking re-election.
The Obamedia sprang into action, helping to pound Boonstra:
Media organizations investigating the ad’s claims note that Boonstra was able to find comparable new insurance under the law; the Washington Post’s “Fact Checker” blog gave the ad “two Pinocchios” (as compared to four for President Obama’s claim that people could keep their insurance under the law).
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.
In his rebuke of the ad, Glenn Kessler makes the same mistake liberals make every day of the week- they confuse coverage with care.
Boonstra was able to find a plan with a similar overall cost. That’s where the discussion normally ends for liberals, but it’s wrong. For cancer patients, successful treatment very often hinges upon drug therapy. Not only can you not keep your plan, you might not be able to keep your drugs:
In fact, state and federal regulators must have approved the health plans without reviewing final drug formularies. Many plans are also not publishing information about their networks of doctors, or when they do; the information is unreliable (listing, for example, doctors who argue that they aren’t part of the plans).
There are some things we know about these formularies.
Under the law, the Obamacare plans benchmarked their drug formularies off of one of the health plans already operating in each state.
In selecting this benchmark, they could have to select from one of four options:
They could choose from: 1) One of the three largest small group plans in the state by enrollment; 2) one of the three largest state employee health plans by enrollment; 3) one of the three largest federal employee health plan options by enrollment; or 4) the largest HMO plan offered in the state’s commercial market by enrollment.
Because there’s a wide variation in the breadth of the drug formularies maintained by these four options, there is also wide variation in the Obamcare plans.
The formulary you’ll get depends most of all on which state you live in (and which benchmark was chosen by the state regulators).
It also appears that the final regulation on all this, issued by the Department of Health and Human Services, gave states some latitude to nix drugs that might otherwise be listed on the benchmark formularies they selected. That regulatory wiggle room seems to undermine the whole idea of having a benchmark plan.
So can you find a good drug plan in Obamacare?
It’s difficult.
Secondly, Boonstra lost her plan. Obama promised that she would not lose her plan- no matter what. Piled on the stress of even dealing with cancer Boonstra was dropped into a roiling pot of uncertainty. As the relative of a cancer victim I can tell you that that is significant.
Peters needs a reminder that an Obama Super-PAC ran an ad claiming that Mitt Romney killed Joe Soptic’s wife. That was a dastardly lie, while this message remains accurate.
This is one more effort in the Obama/DNC philosophy of controlling the media and suppressing the ability of conservatives to exercise their First Amendment rights. And let’s remember that democrats have a history of attacking cancer patients. They could call it the “Gutless Doctrine”
DrJohn has been a health care professional for more than 30 years. In addition to clinical practice he has done extensive research and has published widely with over 70 original articles and abstracts in the peer-reviewed literature. DrJohn is well known in his field and has lectured on every continent except for Antarctica. He has been married to the same wonderful lady for over 30 years and has three kids- two sons, both of whom are attorneys and one daughter on her way into the field of education.
DrJohn was brought up with the concept that one can do well if one is prepared to work hard but nothing in life is guaranteed.
Except for liberals being foolish.