It is one thing to ignore the facts when they are discussed by unknown scientists outlining the evidence for evolution or the dangers of global warming. But when the facts impact your daily life, one has to wonder how blind some folks can be.
Two examples are outlined below and both have to do with the Affordable Care Act, which Republicans must sell as a terrible thing, even when their own personal experience tells them otherwise.
Julie Boonstra is the latest "victim" of the ACA. You can hear her story in television attack ads paid for by the conservative group Americans for Prosperity. According to Boonstra, her health-care plan was canceled because of the ACA and her new insurance through the ACA is "unaffordable." During the television ad, Boonstra states that her ad is personal and has nothing to do with her politics.
But like so many of these anti-ACA ads, Boonstra's story is both political and false. Thanks to good investigative reporting by the Detroit News, we now know that Boonstra's husband served as the chair of their county GOP, and that he was appointed by the Republican governor of Michigan to the Michigan Court of Appeals.
The Detroit News also discovered that Boonstra was paying $1,100 per month for insurance and out-of-pocket payments for her health care, but is now paying at total of $996 per month for the Blue Cross Premier Gold program under the ACA. This includes her insurance premium of $571 and her maximum out-of-pocket expenses of $425 per month. As the newspaper points out, $996 is lower than $1,100, and thanks to the ACA, Boonstra is saving $1,248 per year for her health care. When contacted by the newspaper with these facts, Boonstra insisted that the newspaper's math was incorrect.
Oh, and Boonstra has leukemia. But, because of the ACA, she doesn't have to worry, as she did before, that her insurance could be canceled due to her pre-existing condition. Like millions of other Americans, she is now protected from discrimination due to her condition.
Instead of complaining about the ACA, Boonstra should be praising the ACA and thanking President Barack Obama for her better and less expensive insurance coverage.
Listen to Fergus Cullen, the former chair of the New Hampshire Republican Party who is saving $1,000 a month for his family's health-care insurance thanks to the ACA. In a letter to The New Hampshire Union Leader newspaper, Cullen praised his experience in signing up for his new insurance plan using the federal website. He stated that he had his family of five signed up for their new insurance plan in under an hour, and called the experience "pretty impressive," and "intuitive for people who are used to using smartphones and tablets."
Cullen paid $22,121 for his family health insurance plan in 2012 and $26,934 in 2013. When he called his insurance provider to complain that his rates were becoming unaffordable, his insurance provider referred him to the federal exchange system under the ACA. Cullen did just that, and within one hour found a strong family plan for $12,000 less than what he was paying.
Did this experience make Cullen a fan of the ACA? Of course it did not. Cullen stated that Obama and the ACA "does too little to streamline health-care services and reduce costs."
Well, it certainly reduced his costs.
According to Gallup, the percentage of Americans reporting that they do not have health insurance this month has decreased to 15.9 percent compared to 18 percent at the height of the recession. This is the lowest level since Obama took office. "It's probably a reasonable hypothesis that the Affordable Care Act is having something to do with this drop," said Frank Newport, Gallup's editor-in-chief. That will continue to drop by 4 to 5 percentage points through 2014, according to the Congressional Budget Office.
Despite the facts, however, when it comes to the ACA, there is no pleasing some people.
