Yeah, her again.
Julie Boonstra, the
high-profile and frequently debunked Obamacare "victim" the Koch brothers have highlighted in Michigan's Senate race, is back, again. She's telling her story in an
op-ed in
The Detroit News.
Five years ago, I was diagnosed with leukemia. The first thing I did was find a health plan that fit my needs—a "Cadillac" plan because that covered 100 percent of my expensive treatments. While the plan was expensive, it allowed me to focus on my health and to see the specialists and doctors that I needed. Most of all, it gave me peace of mind.
Ms. Boonstra is pretty much one in a million to find an insurance company that would take her
after a diagnosis with leukemia. Seriously, how does that phone call go. "I'd like to buy your insurance, please." "Okay, got any pre-existing conditions?" "Just leukemia." "No prob." So was she uninsured before her diagnosis? Did she have inadequate insurance? Did she inform her new insurers of her new diagnosis? When she says "100 percent" of treatments, does that mean
all of her costs were covered? She didn't have to pay anything at all out-of-pocket? We don't know. She won't answer any of those questions, the ones that are key to her claims.
For more of her unsubstantiated claims, and there are plenty, go below the fold.
Obamacare canceled my plan. Last October, I received a cancellation letter. I was being denied my insurance choice because my plan didn’t comply with Obamacare. I was shocked. Like the rest of the country, I’d heard the president promise, “if you like your health care plan, you can keep it.”
First and foremost: Obamacare did not cancel Boonstra's health insurance plan. The insurance company did. As unbelievable as is Boonstra's claim that she got this great insurance with a new cancer diagnosis is the claim that an insurance policy as good as the one she had would not have complied with the law. That makes no sense at all. Chances are much greater that the insurance company wanted an excuse to dump a very expensive cancer patient, and used the new law as an excuse.
As to the latest revelation that she's actually saving at least $1,200 a year now with the new plan, in addition to the $571 a month she's saving in premiums, she persists in a convoluted explanation about out-of-pocket costs, which she continues to refuse to acknowledge are limited by the law!
The premiums were cut in half, but much of those savings were offset by an increased out-of-pocket limit [...] 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.
Again with the "Obamacare canceled" her plan! But there's acknowledgement at all that her out-of-pocket costs are limited and
she's saving money! Instead, she veers off into a sob story accusing Democratic Rep. Gary Peters and Sen. Harry Reid of calling her a liar and trying to "silence" her. In other words, doing what Republicans do best: play the victim.
While I have the utmost sympathy for Ms. Boonstra's situation as a cancer patient trying to navigate the confusing world of health insurance, my sympathy ends there. She is using her cancer to advance the cause of the Koch brothers and Republicans to take away the health insurance of millions of people. That's just sick.
12:52 PM PT: Perhaps this is the explanation on Boonstra's pre-existing condition: a new state law in 2013 changed the status of Blue Cross/Blue Shield of Michigan, from "a 'benevolent trust' owned by the people of Michigan" that basically had to take all comers, to "a customer-owned, nonprofit, mutual insurance company." BCBS had to accept her when she applied. But did they dump her as soon as they had the opportunity?