The Koch Brothers' AFP is "using the woman whose cancer they have exploited as a human shield"

...................................................................................................................................................................
Boonstra: Bought and paid for by Koch brothers
By Eric Baerren, March 6, 2014

It’s a bit early in the year, but already the political ads have started. You probably heard about that weird, disturbing ad that ran on the governor’s behalf during the Super Bowl, and you might have seen an ad featuring a Dexter woman with leukemia named Julie Boonstra.

If you have, you have been lied to.

The ad says that Boonstra lost her coverage under Obamacare, which is the only part of the ad that is accurate. What it implies is that she lost her coverage and her doctor, and that her new insurance is unaffordable. The point of the ad is that Gary Peters, the Democrat running for Michigan’s open Senate seat, voted in favor of Obamacare and is responsible for her losing her health care.

It’s a horrible scenario. Fortunately for Boonstra, it’s also a giant pile of lies.

When Boonstra attended the State of the Union as a guest of a downstate Congressman, she let slip the parts of the story that you don’t hear in the ad, like that she found new insurance that had her old doctor in her network and that rather than becoming horribly unaffordable, her monthly premiums were cut in half. Furthermore, under Obamacare, her out-of-pocket costs are capped at $6,500.

If you do the math, if her out-of-pocket costs are maxed out and if her old insurance had no out-of-pocket costs (please, stifle your laughter), her health care costs are very slightly higher (it bears repeating that this is only true if she had no out-of-pocket expenses under her old insurance). She also has the same doctor, and her insurance company can’t drop her coverage because her costs of care are high. It’s an Obamacare success story.

So, why is she telling everyone that Obamacare has done her wrong? Let’s skip past her and focus on the group behind the ad, Americans for Prosperity. AFP is a front group for the Koch brothers, who are sinking millions and millions of dollars into races across the country in hopes that the Republican Party can win the Senate. They haven’t given up on fully repealing Obamacare, you see, and don’t care what it takes.

They’ve gone one disgrace further past merely lying to you, in fact. They are using the woman whose cancer they have exploited as a human shield. They’ve run ads in other states that turned out just as phony, so naturally Boonstra’s story attracted scrutiny in the national media. They figured out pretty quickly that behind the very thin veneer of truth in that Blue Cross canceled her policy, that the rest of the ad had as much truth to it as Goldilocks and the Three Bears. Once this got out, AFP’s strategy was not to come clean but to pretend that criticism of their untrue ad is a personal attack on Boonstra. They lied to you about her Obamacare story, and when confronted with this, they responded by saying, “Why is Gary Peters trying to silence a woman with cancer?”

It’s not Gary Peters who is calling the ad a pack of lies, but the media. That includes fact checking outfits at the Washington Post and at Michigan’s own Bridge Magazine (Bridge, a publication with a centrist editorial bent, flagged the ad as a flagrant foul this week). But I suppose that if you’re going to lie about a cancer sufferer and use her as a human shield, it’s small potatoes to also lie about who your critics are.

It’s worth considering that this ad was made most possible at a time when our politics has become flush with money from front groups like AFP. We were told that should welcome this on the grounds that money spent is a form of political speech and that it would elevate how we elect our leaders. The thing, it speaks for itself.
...................................................................................................................................................................