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Michigan is a crucial piece on the 2014 U.S. Senate chessboard, and Republicans have a good shot at gaining retiring Democrat Carl Levin\u2019s open seat, given Democratic nominee Gary Peters\u2019s unpopular House vote for the Affordable Care Act. Yet Peters has hope. The president\u2019s unilateral delays in Obamacare mandates have eased planned layoffs by local governments and businesses. Moderate GOP governor Rick Snyder supports the ACA\u2019s Medicaid expansion. And the state\u2019s liberal news media have largely ignored the estimated 225,000-plus canceled individual policies and the\u00a0job losses at medical-device maker Stryker<\/a>.<\/p>\n But Julie Boonstra won\u2019t be ignored. So she must be destroyed.<\/p>\n The Dexter, Mich., leukemia victim lost her coverage last fall and now\u00a0stars in a devastating ad<\/a>\u00a0fingering Obamacare \u2014 and Peters \u2014 for her resulting distress. In an extraordinary media counterstrike, Boonstra, a schoolteacher, has come under assault from Democrats and their media allies\u00a0decrying her as a liar and an ignoramus for failing to embrace her new, Obamacare-approved plan.<\/p>\n As with outspoken female Obamacare cancer victims in other states, the intent is to intimidate critics from coming forward. Senator Harry Reid\u2019s outrageous Senate-floor\u00a0claim<\/a>\u00a0that all Obamacare horror stories \u201care untrue\u201d is the mantra of the Democrats\u2019 scorched-earth campaign to elect Peters and preserve a Democratic Senate.<\/p>\n Boonstra\u2019s ad, backed by Americans for Prosperity, says her policy was \u201ccanceled because of Obamacare\u201d and that she fears her \u201cout-of-pocket costs are so high they are unaffordable.\u201d Health-care experts like the Manhattan Institute\u2019s\u00a0Yevgeniy Feyman<\/a>\u00a0say Boonstra \u201chas legitimate concerns.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cIt comes down to uncertainty,\u201d Feyman says. \u201cCancer treatment is a very personal decision. Her new treatment may not take into account out-of-pocket costs. If her drugs are off the formulary, then [an ACA-mandated cost cap on out-of-pocket drug costs] doesn\u2019t apply.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cIf I do not receive my medication, I will die,\u201d worries Boonstra, who was invited to the State of the Union address as the guest of Representative Tim Walberg (R., Mich.). \u201cI believed the president when he said I could keep my health-insurance plan. I feel lied to. Congressman Peters, your decision to vote for Obamacare jeopardized my health.\u201d<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n \u201cNo doubt that was a difficult experience,\u201d patronized\u00a0Washington Post<\/em>\u00a0fact-checker Glenn Kessler before knocking Boonstra\u2019s lack of enthusiasm for a lower-premium, higher-out-of-pocket-cost Blue Cross plan that Democrats insist is more affordable.<\/p>\n Michigan\u2019s media piled on. The\u00a0Detroit Free Press<\/em>\u00a0trumpeted Kessler\u2019s claim that Boonstra was a liar deserving \u201ctwo Pinocchios.\u201d \u201cA Dexter woman\u2019s claims in a political ad criticizing U.S. Rep. Gary Peters don\u2019t add up,\u201d\u00a0echoed MLive.com<\/a>\u00a0(a consortium of Booth newspapers in the state), faulting Boonstra\u2019s math skills.<\/p>\n These organizations have ignored the details of Boonstra\u2019s plan \u2014 instead using numbers from Blue Cross (an advocate for Obamacare) numbers to attack her. Through AFP spokesman Scott Hagerstrom, Boonstra communicated her concerns with her new plan.<\/p>\n Uncertainty dogs her \u2014 especially having been lied to once by the president. Where her canceled plan\u2019s premiums once covered all her costs, she now must plan for out-of-pocket expenses. Those expenses are capped\u00a0but will double to $10,200 if she goes out of her network \u2014 a not-uncommon need for cancer patients, whose treatment often changes \u2014 for a doctor or tests. Of her five cancer drugs, she has already discovered that one (Loratadine) is not covered.\u00a0Detroit News<\/em>\u00a0columnist Dan Calabrese\u00a0also unearthed<\/a>\u00a0the fact that glaucoma and \u201clong-term care and nursing care are not covered.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Michigan is a crucial piece on the 2014 U.S. Senate chessboard, and Republicans have a good shot at gaining retiring Democrat Carl Levin\u2019s open seat, given Democratic nominee Gary Peters\u2019s unpopular House vote for the Affordable Care Act. Yet Peters has hope. The president\u2019s unilateral delays in Obamacare mandates have eased planned layoffs by local […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,87],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/henrypayne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14485"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/henrypayne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/henrypayne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/henrypayne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/henrypayne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14485"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/henrypayne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14485\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14486,"href":"https:\/\/henrypayne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14485\/revisions\/14486"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/henrypayne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14485"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/henrypayne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14485"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/henrypayne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14485"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}