“People don’t like political ads. I don’t like them either,” says a woman in a political ad sponsored by Americans for Prosperity. WRAL reported that AFP has spent more money on political ads than any other group since the 2014 election cycle began. This particular ad shows a woman talking directly to the camera saying, “[Obamacare] just doesn’t work.”
The woman asks people to call Sen. Kay Hagan and request that she “Stop thinking about politics, and start thinking about people.”
Hagan has fired back, saying, “The North Carolina Legislature has made healthcare reform entirely about politics by rejecting a state-based exchange and Medicaid expansion.”
This ad has one purpose: to scare people about the Affordable Care Act and gain enough opposition to Democrat leaders to make sure they’re not reelected.
The financial supporters of the advertisement are David and Charles Koch, the leaders of Koch Industries, which Forbes named the second-largest private company in the United States. The New York Times reported that the Koch brothers spent an estimated $20 million on the ad campaign, nearly seven times more than the $3 million the Senate Majority PAC planned last week to spend a response advertisement. This is an astounding sum of money to spend on advertising that wrongly manipulates the American people. The ad doesn’t propose any alternative solutions, and it certainly doesn’t use any statistics or sources to back up its claims.
The woman in the ad says, “Millions of people can’t see their own doctors, and millions are paying more and getting less.”
It’s not accurate to blame Hagan when, according to The News & Observer, Gov. Pat McCrory and the Republican-led legislature denied federal aid that would’ve expanded Medicaid to as many as 500,000 people. It also rejected having a state-run marketplace to sell the insurance and left that job to the federal government, so the marketplace will not be as suited to North Carolinians. The legislature is making the transition to the ACA more difficult for citizens instead of “thinking about people,” as the ad requests.
North Carolina Health News reported that “[North Carolina] has had some of the most robust enrollment activity in the country.”
North Carolina’s enrollment number is greater than that of some states with bigger populations, such as Michigan and Illinois. This shows that many North Carolinians want to have a plan under the ACA, but many still need cooperation from the legislature to receive the plan and assistance they need. If it had been more cooperative with the federal government and implementation of this system, North Carolina might’ve had plans better suited for its citizens. McCrory and members of the legislature need to stop politicizing the ACA and start working with the federal government to assist people with adjusting.
An ad sponsored by AFP in Michigan made very serious accusations about the healthcare system that have been proven incorrect. It criticized Democratic Rep. Gary Peters by showing cancer patient Julie Boonstra giving an emotional story about her treatment, claiming her medications under her ACA plan are “unaffordable.” Detroit News reported this month that when Boonstra identified which health plan she was on, it was found that she will actually save about $1,200 this year.
With this healthcare shift, people need facts and information that will help them determine what healthcare plan they should be on. This ad exploits Boonstra’s story and people with similar conditions with the goal of getting what AFP and Koch brothers want politically. AFP has repeatedly shown ads that make inaccurate claims.
I’m not saying the ACA is perfect; it has definitely had its flaws with the website rollout. Still, it’s too soon to determine how the healthcare program will fare, and it’s too early to just denounce it with ads such as this that scare the public.
The ACA passed after decades of failed attempts to provide Americans with universal healthcare coverage, and it is wrong to claim supporters of the program don’t have the wellbeing of the American people in mind. The wellbeing of people is the main principle President Barack Obama and supporters of the program fought for. The outrageous sum of money the Koch brothers are putting into these manipulative, exaggerated ads is a pathetic way to prevent Democrats from reelection. If AFP is going to criticize the system, it should present facts instead of generalizations.
