Thug nation

Henry Payne at NRO has a piece called "The War on Julie Boonstra."  She's the lady in the AFP television spot who has leukemia and had her health insturance policy - with which she was quite pleased - cancelled.  The attempt to discredit her and squelch the spot is enough to chill your bones.

Peters and the media have come out swinging, claiming Boonstra is a right-wing Koch Brothers tool (the Kochs donate to AFP). Like their fellow Democrats in office, newsrooms have long been sympathetic to universal health care.

“No doubt that was a difficult experience,” patronized Washington Post fact-checker Glenn Kessler before knocking Boonstra’s lack of enthusiasm for a lower-premium, higher-out-of-pocket-cost Blue Cross plan that Democrats insist is more affordable.

Michigan’s media piled on. The Detroit Free Press trumpeted Kessler’s claim that Boonstra was a liar deserving “two Pinocchios.” “A Dexter woman’s claims in a political ad criticizing U.S. Rep. Gary Peters don’t add up,” echoed MLive.com (a consortium of Booth newspapers in the state), faulting Boonstra’s math skills.

These organizations have ignored the details of Boonstra’s plan — instead using Blue Cross (an advocate for Obamacare) numbers to attack her. Through AFP spokesman Scott Hagerstrom, Boonstra communicated her concerns with her new plan.

Uncertainty dogs her — especially having been lied to once by the president. Where her canceled plan’s premiums once covered all her costs, she now must plan for out-of-pocket expenses. Those expenses are capped but will double to $10,200 if she goes out of her network — a not uncommon need for cancer patients, whose treatment often changes — for a doctor or tests. Of her five cancer drugs, she has already discovered that one (Loratadine) is not covered. Detroit News columnist Dan Calabrese also unearthed the fact that glaucoma and “long-term care and nursing care are not covered.”

“She has been bedridden, had to sell her house, give up her teaching career,” says Hagerstrom of the anguish that Boonstra’s rare form of leukemia has caused her. “She liked her insurance and now has to relive the uncertainty of five years ago.”
Rather than meeting with his constituent to hear her concerns, Peters tried to intimidate local news stations into pulling the ad, effectively silencing Boonstra. “Failure to prevent the airing of ‘false and misleading advertising’ can be cause for the loss of a station’s license,” wrote Peters through his legal counsel. Subtle as a club.
Peters’s threats received little Michigan media attention. Neither did Boonstra’s failed attempt to contact Peters. Michigan media ha internalized Reid’s mantra.
But Boonstra has not backed down. The leukemia victim wrote a letter this week to the Detroit News explaining the complexities of her situation.
“[My critics] choose to ignore the problems inherent with high out-of-pocket limits and prescriptions that aren’t covered for a person like me,” wrote Boonstra. “My new plan could mean wildly fluctuating and front-loaded costs in the first few months of the year. I chose my old plan — the one that Obamacare canceled — specifically so I could budget for the same monthly costs with certainty.”

Payne demonstrates that this kind of treatment is a pattern, aslo mentioning Edie Sundby's treatment by the Los Angeles Times, Betty Grenier's treatment by the Spokane Review, and  Catherine Blackwood's treatment by Daily Kos.

They do this when Americans dare to speak out about health care, the environment, faith, culture, and economic common sense.  Ostracize and discredit, the Alinsky way.