“It’s about people”
by digby
The new AFP ad gets the fact checking treatment and comes up short as they always do. You can see why:
“People don’t like political ads. I don’t like them either. But health care isn’t about politics. It’s about people. And millions of people have lost their health insurance, millions of people can’t see their own doctors, and millions are paying more and getting less.”
Click the link if you need to know why that’s total BS.
Here’s the thing: most people aren’t dealing with Obamacare so they don’t have a clue if this is true or not. They either have insurance through their employer or the government. And while I’m sure that political junkies will be reading the fact-checker columns religiously, I seriously doubt that most people will know that this ad is lying.
I just wonder when somebody on the left is going to counter these things with some stories of their own. You know they’re out there — people who were denied coverage or couldn’t afford insurance. Even the millions of boring ones like mine, which just say “I’m saving money and got a better plan.” Somebody needs to tell those stories.
I have a little moustache of understanding story to tell about being in the grocery store chatting amiably about the price of vegetables with some guy who then launched into a tirade about Obamacare and how it makes no sense to cover pre-existing conditions because then nobody will ever buy insurance until they get sick. I didn’t want to get into it with him there in the store so I just said that he’s mistaken about how the law works and that the vast majority of people will now have insurance so that when they get sick they’ll already be covered. He claimed that people can’t afford to buy insurance anymore because it’s so expensive. And that people he knows had their insurance cancelled and they can’t get anything to replace it. And on, and on. He had an answer for everything, all of from listening to hate radio, hearing these commercials and watching Fox News.
Granted, he was obviously a right wing fanatic and one could never expect to convince him that the plan which he was determined to hate was actually good. But I think there are a lot of people out there who may be less inclined to assume the worst but who aren’t hearing anything different. (Remember, most people aren’t insured by the private market.) Unless someone tells them the stories of those who have had their lives improved, many of our fellow Americans are only going to hear the lies and distortions the Kochs are spending millions to disseminate all over the country.
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