As Obama Delays Obamacare Again, Julie Boonstra Strikes Back

As Scott noted a little while ago, the Obama administration has again pushed back the deadline for individual and small group policies to comply with Obamacare’s requirements. They are doing this, obviously, because they are trying to put off the political fallout when millions of Americans lose the coverage they had, and find that coverage under Obamacare will be more expensive and/or more limited.

Which gives a special resonance to the story of Julie Boonstra. Mrs. Boonstra, as you likely recall, is a Michigan resident who suffers from leukemia. She filmed a television ad for Americans For Prosperity in which she described the disruption that resulted when Obamacare caused her to lose the wholly satisfactory insurance that she had enjoyed, and replaced it with something less satisfactory to her.

Harry Reid and other Democrats attacked Mrs. Boonstra, calling her a liar. The Democratic Senate candidate who was the target of the AFP ad, Gary Peters, had his lawyers send letters to Michigan televisions stations, threatening to have the FCC pull their licenses to broadcast if they aired the ad. Of course, neither Peters nor Reid is familiar with the details of the coverage that Mrs. Boonstra enjoyed under her old policy, or under her new, Obamacare-compliant policy. They based their claim that she is a liar on general characteristics of Obamacare.

But why this hysterical reaction from the Democrats? Mrs. Boonstra’s central complaint is that she was lied to–President Obama said that if she liked her coverage, she could keep it. She liked her coverage, and she lost it. That was the Lie of the Year, and neither Harry Reid nor Gary Peters is trying to resurrect Obama’s falsehood. On the contrary, by again extending the deadline for implementation of Obamacare with regard to individual and small group policies, the Obama administration is admitting that there are not just thousands, but millions of Julie Boonstras out there–people who are happy with their insurance, but are going to lose it because of the Democrats’ arrogance and deceit.

And not just the Obama administration, either: Gary Peters is identified as one of the Congressmen who consulted with the administration with regard to today’s two-year delay. Peters doesn’t want thousands more Julie Boonstras receiving cancellation notices in Michigan just before November’s election. Under the circumstances, it takes a special kind of nerve to call her a liar.

Julie Boonstra is not backing down. She has filmed a second ad for AFP. Here it is:

Notice: All comments are subject to moderation. Our comments are intended to be a forum for civil discourse bearing on the subject under discussion. Commenters who stray beyond the bounds of civility or employ what we deem gratuitous vulgarity in a comment — including, but not limited to, “s***,” “f***,” “a*******,” or one of their many variants — will be banned without further notice in the sole discretion of the site moderator.

Responses