Many of you know me well here at Daily Kos. I exist here and throughout the Internet in plain sight. I do this to provide a foundation behind my words, to show that I am not afraid of them being in the public. Perhaps surprisingly, I have never been a victim of right wing shenanigans throughout my seven year membership of this community.
That is, until today. Yes, today begins my entrance into the world of being dragged through the mud by a Fox News lacky and self-described "journalist".
Yesterday afternoon I received an email from someone named Katherine Timpf asking for an interview regarding some comments I made about how the Affordable Care Act is impacting college students.
I had never heard of this individual, and I'm not stupid, so obviously my plan of action was to search her on Google and see what came up. Within seconds of searching Ms. Timpf on Google I found out that she is a "journalist" for CampusReform.org, a thinly veiled conservative organization dedicated to "expos[ing] bias and abuse on the nation's college campuses". Ms. Timpf also lists appearances on "Fox and Friends", "Blaze TV", and Glenn Beck's "Real News" on her resume, just to give you a picture of the individual that I'm dealing with here.
(Separately, as a direct statement to Katherine, who obviously lurks around Daily Kos and now probably my comments - did you really think I would just blindly agree to an interview with a "journalist" - using a Gmail address, by the way - without doing some research on you? Ha!)
Follow below the fold to see what transpired next and how I am setting the record straight.
Displayed below is an unaltered screenshot (other than cropping for space) of the initial email I received from Ms. Timpf:
Text for those of you who may be on mobile or a tablet:
Hello,
I am a reporter working on deadline on an article about changes in student healthcare at University of Pennsylvania, and wanted to ask you a few questions, particularly about your response to the "Confessions of an Obamacare advocate" post on the Daily Kos.
Is there at time today you would be available for a brief interview?
Thank you!
After searching Ms. Timpf on Google, as I mentioned above, I knew that she was intending to take my words out of context (I will provide a full clarification a little bit down in the diary). After some consultation with trusted Daily Kos members, I decided later that night to reply with this text (I also posted the same text as a
reply comment to my initial comment):
The issues that I mentioned in my comment are a slight annoyance, however our committee has full confidence that we will solve them without any problems. Overall, I enthusiastically support the Affordable Care Act and its mission to ensure that all Americans have access to affordable, quality health care.
I wish the Republican party would work with Democrats to fix any issues that are commonplace with new legislation, rather than repeatedly try to dismantle the entire law.
Cheers,
Of course, I doubted that Ms. Timpf would drop her pending article, and I was correct in that assumption. Just a few hours ago Ms. Timpf went live with an article entitled
"Stung by high costs, liberal Ivy League blogger slams flaws in Obamacare" And yes, I am linking to it so that you can read it and understand the complete mischaracterization of my words.
As a bit of background, I serve as a graduate student representative to the Student Health Insurance Advisory Committee (SHIAC) at the University of Pennsylvania (my current graduate institution). The committee is composed of provosts, deans, faculty, Student Health Services physicians and staff, and a large number of graduate students. I have been a member for five years.
Our mission is to provide an insurance plan to students so that they are able to meet UPenn's requirement stating that all full-time enrolled students must have health insurance. We meet throughout the academic year to assess plan performance, develop tweaks to the plan (like deductible amount, co-pay amount, additions/removal of benefits, etc.) in collaboration with our insurance underwriter, with the ultimate goal of setting the final premium price such that the increases are not devastating to students. We have successfully completed that goal all years I have served on the committee. It is important to keep in mind that our health plan covers exclusively college students (and particularly, graduate students), whose age range is usually 22-30 years of age. Other than spouses and/or dependents (grad students who are married and/or have young children), almost all students that enroll in our UPenn plan are graduate students.
On November 11, 2013 I made some comments in regard to some ACA requirements that are out of the scope of college age students (most notably the requirement for all plans to cover pediatric dental procedures).
For length purposes, I removed the blockquote of my comment, which you can read via this link.
Ms. Timpf contacted me about those comments, and has taken them entirely out of context.
Here are my direct rebuttals to Ms. Timpf's inflammatory remarks:
-When I described Obamacare as the "law of unintended consequences", I echoed a phrase that we have used in the committee. It is not meant to display dissatisfaction with the ACA in any way; instead it reflects that there are some annoyances of the law that impact graduate student-aged individuals in a different way than the general population. But these are annoyances, not chaos. We have dealt with similar issues in the past, and we are confident that we will successfully deal with the issues before us this year.
-"[R]elying on marketing slogans, some of which turned out not to be so correct, is turning out to be problematic," he lamented." - This is in regard to the whole "you can keep your plan if you want" statements. Insurance companies have been canceling plans that currently don't meet the minimum standards (essentially, what was known as "catastrophic plans"), even though they are able to be grandfathered in. Esteemed Daily Kos member Vyan has been destroying this right wing narrative with his fantastic diaries. Yes, some plans are being canceled, thus causing people to say that "you can keep your plan if you want" was wrong. But where does the blame lay? The Affordable Care Act ALLOWS plans to be grandfathered. So if your plan was canceled, blame the insurance companies.
-Ms. Timpf twists my words around by inferring that I'm a bad progressive (or person in general) because I'm OK with having prosthesis replacement and gender reassignment surgery covered as a benefit, but not pediatric dental. First of all, I never said that I was against having pediatric dental coverage - all I commented on was the fact that due to our plan's enrollee population (being graduate students) that such a benefit would be largely unused, even though we have to pay for it. Newsflash - that is the entire purpose of insurance. Spreading out the risk pool.
You may not have cancer, but your premium dollars pay for the care of someone who does. That is how insurance works. You are free to argue that such a mechanism does not work when it comes to health care, but for the purpose of this discussion, that's how health insurance is currently designed.
-"they "don't have the time and/or capacity to really understand the gritty details."" I don't think it's a secret that comparing healthcare plans can be confusing. But how the hell is that any different than before the ACA? If you were shopping on the market for individual plans, you were comparing them to see which was the best value for you. When insurance plan brochures are 50+ pages each, I don't think it's inaccurate to say that comparing many options can be a bit confusing for some people.
You want to know what would help eliminate the issue of comparing 50+ page private health insurance plan brochures? If you guessed "Medicare for All", you're a winner.
I wanted to set the record straight immediately after seeing that Ms. Timpf went live with her misleading article. She took my words out of context and only like a true right wing "journalist" would do, she failed to consider the totality of my comments. To defend myself against this mischaracterization of my words, I felt compelled to write this response diary and expose Katherine Timpf for the Beck/Hannity/Fox News lackey that she is.
Finally, I have to say that I chuckled at her dig at me being an "Ivy League" blogger. What can I say, you got me. Oh, and if you're going to use my name in your hatchet piece, please spell it correctly. It's "Michael", not "Micheal"...
All I have to say to Katherine Timpf is that "I knew James O'Keefe. James O'Keefe was a classmate of mine. Katherine Timpf, you're no James O'Keefe."
The floor is yours.