ACA horror story: cancer stricken woman says ACA plan was unaffordable - another GOP bald faced LIE

[Bill USA]

Americans for Prosperity (AFP), attack (on the truth) ad has woman saying:
(emphases my own)

“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, [font size="3"]the out-of-pocket costs are so high, it’s unaffordable[/font]. 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.”


http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/fact-checker/wp/2014/02/20/a-hard-hitting-anti-obamacare-ad-makes-a-claim-that-doesnt-add-up/
(emphases my own)

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.

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At that news conference, Boonstra said, “I’m paying a higher cost now as far as out of pocket costs and the coverage is just not the same.” But in the new ad she says “the out-of-pocket costs are so high, it’s unaffordable.”

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—[font size="3" color="red"]just two dollars shy of the out-of-pocket maximum[/font].
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[font size="4"]Perhaps people who believe in truth in advertizing will post this on FB and anywhere else on the web where people will see it. Will you help document that the GOP are serial LIARS. [/font]

[SunSeeker]

1. Every fucking single time my in-laws forward some lying GOP email, I show them it's a lie.

They NEVER say sorry, they just come up with another email, and when I debunk that one they send another...relentlessly. They don't give a shit about facts. To them this is war--a war to "take our country back." And like any war, all's fair, including wartime propaganda.

[Bill USA]

7. maybe u should tell them of Nataline Sarkysian as an example of how insurance worked before the ACA

http://www.michaelmoore.com/words/mike-friends-blog/death-panels-fact-fiction

Nataline was diagnosed with leukemia at 14. Initial treatments were successful and the disease went into remission. It came back a couple of years later, though, and the sort of treatments she'd had previously were not working. She had to have a bone marrow transplant, which weakened her liver. In mid-December 2007, her doctors at UCLA Medical Center said she needed a liver transplant. They asked for prior approval from her insurer, CIGNA, to pay for it. Nataline's doctors said they believed she had at least a 65 percent chance of living five years or longer if she had the procedure.

A CIGNA medical director 2,500 miles away in Pittsburgh disagreed. To the astonishment of Nataline's doctors, he ruled the transplant "experimental." Insurers almost never pay for procedures they consider experimental, so this corporate medical director's decision meant that the Sarkisyans would have to pay for the transplant and all related care out of their own pockets. Not being wealthy enough to do that, Nataline's parents launched a campaign to rally public support and media interest in the case. It worked. CIGNA eventually agreed to cover the transplant. Unfortunately, so much time had passed since the original request had been made that Nataline's other organs began to shut down. She died a few hours after the family got the news that CIGNA had changed its mind.


As chief spokesman for CIGNA at the time, I was on the receiving end of hundreds of calls and emails from reporters and also from regular folks who were outraged that CIGNA had initially refused to pay for Nataline's transplant. The Sarkisyan family sued CIGNA, but the case was thrown out because of a Supreme Court precedent that shielded employer-paid plans from damages resulting from their decisions.

I wish I could say that Nataline's story was unique. In the course of my 20 years in the industry, however, I handled media inquiries involving many cases in which coverage had been denied by a corporate medical director for one reason or another. I probably will never know how many of those people died as a result of not getting the care they needed, and I will never know if Nataline would have lived if she had gotten the liver transplant when her doctors wanted to do it. I will also never know if she might have gotten the transplant if she had lived in Canada or England or France, countries that do not permit doctors at for-profit corporations to make such decisions.
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[SunSeeker]

9. Thanks for the link. Yes, Wendell Potter is a hero for what he has brought to light.

Unfortunately, my in-laws don't give a shit. Every time I give them facts like this, they come back with something like, "typical liberal lies," etc. They don't even try to address the facts. Even when they are proven wrong, like when my mother-in-law's sincere prediction that Obama would put her in a burkha after elected, they just move on to some other outlandish, baseless assertion.

I think the elderly right wingers are a lost cause. You have to fight through so much prejudice and fear. We need to really push the facts on those fence-sitters, the independents. They might just listen.

[Sarah Ibarruri]

2. Republicans are such pieces of crap. I shouldn't let this sort of thing get to me

But it does. Someone I know of in Georgia is unable to get Medicaid because the a-h Repuke politicians there refuse to accept the federal money which would work with Obamacare, so she could get treated. I hate these people. I know hate isn't a good thing, but I get exasperated with this trash.

[proverbialwisdom]

3. Seen this?

http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702303945704579390772732855560

OPINION

Stephen Blackwood: ObamaCare and My Mother's Cancer Medicine
The news was dumbfounding. She used to have a policy that covered the drug that kept her alive. Now she's on her own.

By STEPHEN BLACKWOOD
Feb. 23, 2014 7:10 p.m. ET

When my mother was diagnosed with carcinoid cancer in 2005, when she was 49, it came as a lightning shock. Her mother, at 76, had yet to go gray, and her mother's mother, at 95, was still playing bingo in her nursing home. My mother had always been, despite her diminutive frame, a titanic and irrepressible force of vitality and love. She had given birth to me and my nine younger siblings, and juggled kids, home and my father's medical practice with humor and grace for three decades. She swam three times a week in the early mornings, ate healthily and never smoked.

And now, cancer? Anyone who's been there knows that a cancer diagnosis is terrifying. A lot goes through your mind and heart: the deep pang of possible loss (what would my father and all of us do without her?), and the anguish and anger at what feels like injustice (after decades of mothering and managing dad's practice, she was just then going back to school).

We, as a family, were scared and angry, but from the beginning we knew we would do all we could to fight this disease. We became involved with fundraising for research, through the Caring for Carcinoid Foundation in Boston; we blogged; we did triathlons (my mother's idea) and cherished our time together as never before.

Carcinoid, a form of neuroendocrine cancer, is a terminal disease but generally responds well to treatment by Sandostatin, a drug that slows tumor growth and reduces (but does not eliminate) the symptoms of fatigue, nausea and gastrointestinal dysfunction. My mother received a painful shot twice a month and often couldn't sit comfortably for days afterward.

<>

The "Affordable" Care Act is a brutal, Procrustean disaster. In principle, it violates the irreducible particularity of human life, and in practice it will cause many individuals to suffer and die. We can do better, and we must.

Mr. Blackwood is the president of Ralston College, a planned liberal-arts institution in Savannah, Ga., and is on the board of the Caring for Carcinoid Foundation. His mother, Catherine, manages the Family Medicine Center in Virginia Beach, Va.

[Bill USA]

5. Who really cost Mrs. Blackwood her cancer medicine?

http://www.latimes.com/business/hiltzik/la-fi-mh-cancer-medicine-20140224,0,4157578.story#axzz2v8UGKlfo

Blackwood says his mother was well-covered by a Blue Cross/Blue Shield plan until November, when the insurer canceled it. Blackwood says that's because her plan was "illegal" under the ACA, but he doesn't say how or why; there's reason to doubt BC/BS canceled the plan because of the ACA, as opposed to its own desire to stop covering a manifestly expensive patient and other customers like her in a limited pool of patients. As is typical of this genre of Obamacare criticism, the Wall Street Journal doesn't provide us with enough information to divine the answer.

Blackwood didn't respond to my request for more details, but I did reach his father, Robert, a family physician. He wasn't sure of the reason for the cancellation either, but did say that the old plan cost $5,000 a month in premiums to cover four family members. When it was canceled, BC/BS offered a substitute plan with a monthly premium of $11,000, which Dr. Blackwood quite properly concluded was out of line.

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But let's try to figure out what's going on here. First, we don't know why Blue Cross/Blue Shield canceled the old plan. We can say almost certainly that the sole reason isn't that the plan failed to provide benefits required under the ACA, because even adding those couldn't conceivably justify raising the premium to $132,000 a year for a family of four.
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[Doctor_J]

4. You think posting the truth on facebook will have any effect on Fox Nation?

They're morons - completely brain dead. if Fox told them tomorrow that winter coats are a liberal conspiracy, by Monday half of them would be dead from hypothermia, and the other half would be blaming Obama for the deaths.

Think way outside the box when you contemplate how we're going to take the country back from these psychos.

[Bill USA]

6. people have to know what's going on before they can decide how to react to it. Social media has

Last edited Tue Mar 11, 2014, 05:38 PM - Edit history (1)

been credited with playing an important role in getting a number of movements going in the last couple of years.

I am talking about communications, not about what people should do about any information communicated.

I'd be glad to just see more interest in certain efforts by the GOP that are hostile to representative government.

[Bill USA]

8. GOP suck-up Politifact won't say Boonstra ad is a bald faced lie.

http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/article/2014/feb/26/advocacy-group-stirs-michigan-senate-race-ad-f/

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Our conclusion

Being tasked with finding new insurance amid chemotherapy treatment for leukemia certainly doesn’t gel with how Democrats framed the implementation of the health care law. The malfunctions of HealthCare.gov in October undoubtedly did not make it any easier for someone forced to leave their plan and find a new one. [font color="blue"]{this is supposed to be relevant to the question of implied assertion that she couldn't keep her doctor or that the new plan is 'unaffordable'??_Bill USA}[/font]

That said, the ad is, at worst, misleading and, at best, lacking critical context. It leads viewers to believe that Boonstra lost her doctor along with her insurance and her life-saving medication. She has kept her current doctor and still receives the treatment she needs.

Further, the ad said the new plan is unaffordable. While the plan does create less cost certainty, annual caps will limit her bills. At most she will end up paying about the same for her health care as before.

but they didn't rate it a "pants on fire" lie which the facts clearly show it is.

Politifact agains gets a "pants on fire" zero credibility rating.