New billionaire-backed anti-Obamacare ads target "swing" white female voters

With the arrival of the mid-term election campaigns, comes the all-out blitz against “Obamacare.” It aims to prey on the paranoid and ill-informed. The target audience of these ads? The white female vote. Nearly every extreme-right billionaire-paid propaganda broadside features a white female telling one sob story or another about how “Obamacare” has been a virtual death sentence for them. Frankly, I’m not certain what is the “benefit” of appearing uninformed or even ignorant about the Affordable Care Act, but I do understand why the Koch brothers and others of their ilk believe that the key to election victory is preying on the fear and paranoia of (enough) white female voters.

I have to confess that I was never impressed with the media-created theory about the “women’s vote.” Yes, a slightly higher percentage of women vote Democrat than Republican. But one should not read into it what is not there. Minority women are certainly far more reliable Democratic voters than white women; no one need be “confused” by the fact that 58 percent of white female vote was for the benefit of Mitt Romney in the 2012 presidential election. The Koch brothers, who are spending millions on the so-called Americans For Prosperity (meaning their prosperity) anti-ACA spots, hope that they can convince just enough white female voters—since minority women are more likely to see through the racist anti-Obama motivation behind this—to turn the tide in favor of Republicans in some close elections. Why they believe that white female voters are muddle-minded is something you have to ask the people behind these ads. 

One of the targeted elections that has received a great deal of media attention is for the Michigan U.S. Senate seat being vacated by Democrat Carl Levin. One of those seeking his seat is Democratic Rep. Gary Peters, a supporter of the ACA. Peters responded to an AFP ad featuring a white female named Julie Boonstra by threatening the licenses of media outlets running them, for the reason that the ad was deliberately misleading and deceptive. One of them goes like this:

“I was diagnosed with leukemia. I found out I only have a 20 percent chance of surviving. I found this wonderful doctor and a great health care plan. I was doing fairly well fighting the cancer, fighting the leukemia, and then I received a letter. My insurance was canceled because of Obamacare. Now, the out-of-pocket costs are so high, it’s unaffordable. If I do not receive my medication, I will die. I believed the president. I believed I could keep my health insurance plan. I feel lied to. It’s heartbreaking for me. Congressman Peters, your decision to vote Obamacare jeopardized my health.”

Boonstra attended the State of the Union address at the invitation of a Republican Congressman, where she opined “I’m paying a higher cost now as far as out of pocket costs and the coverage is just not the same.”  However, she subsequently stated in the above mentioned ad that “the out-of-pocket costs are so high, it’s unaffordable,” which puts a more “sinister” twist on things.

It is easy to see how all this can mislead the fearful. It also should be easy—for those who actually bother to inform themselves, and those who were provided fraudulent or no health insurance by their employers—to see that Boonstra is so narcissistic that she is unable to sift fact from fiction. The likely reason she “lost” her current insurance plan was because her medical bills were so high the provider was only too happy to make her the federal government’s problem; it is also entirely possible that without the ACA, her premiums under her old plan would have eventually grown beyond her means, and she would then have been left with no alternatives. 

And as Glenn Kessler of The Washington Post pointed out, “First of all, many viewers might think Boonstra lost her doctor, as she mentions her ‘wonderful doctor’ and then says her plan was canceled. But AFP confirms that she was able to find a plan, via Blue Cross Blue Shield, that had her doctor in its network.”  Boonstra’ story about the ACA being “unaffordable” should really anger people in her situation but have always been rejected for coverage or forced to pay outrageously high premiums to start. As Kessler points out:

“The claim that the costs are now ‘unaffordable’ appeared odd because, under Obamacare, there is an out-of-pocket maximum of $6,350 for covered expenses under an individual plan, after which the insurance plan pays 100 percent of covered benefits. The Blue Cross Blue Shield plans in Michigan that appear to match Boonstra’s plan, as described in local news reports, all have that limit…Meanwhile, Boonstra told the Detroit News that her monthly premiums were cut in half, from $1,100 a month to $571. That’s a savings of $529 a month. Over the course of a year, the premium savings amounts to $6,348—just two dollars shy of the out-of-pocket maximum.”

AFP spokespeople have been lying and obfuscating inside and out attempting to justify the spin. One of them, Levi Russell, said that “we would assume there is an OOP max, but this is the story of Julie, a real person suffering from blood cancer, not some neat and tidy White House PowerPoint about how the ACA is helping everyone.” What is he saying? Is he blaming the Obama administration for Boonstra’s leukemia? Did Obama slip some secret cancer-causing microbe in Boonstra’s tap? Maybe in her toothpaste? Russell also points out that Boonstra’s costs may be “unpredictable.” Oh, they were not predictably “unpredictable” before?

The fact of the matter is that the ACA disallows any such “unpredictability,” that the ACA forbids people with pre-existing conditions to be denied coverage. The insurance exchange program in Washington doesn’t even ask if you have a pre-existing condition, only what your income level is. Of course it remains to be seen how total costs and revenue may shake up how the ACA works in practice, but for now there is no rational reason to believe that its intent is not to provide the same level of coverage that most Americans would expect—even hope—to be provided.

On the other hand, it is not at all certain that the Koch brothers and their Republican puppets believe that ordinary Americans should have a similar level of health coverage as they enjoy, which is no doubt why they are fighting so hard against the ACA. It’s “socialist” medicine to provide all with affordable, adequate health care.