Fight GOP front groups distortion of healthcare reform

I’m getting all kinds of messages from healthcare advocacy groups like HCAN - in addition to ‘reality check’ organizations like FactCheck.org - saying that the Shadow GOP is mounting a massive inititative to tarnish/destroy any House candidate who stood strong for healthcare reform. The ads, mostly from your usual bogus GOP front groups like the 60 Plus Association, are gaining strength around the country. They’re trying to convince mostly seniors that terrible … TERRIBLE things are in-store for them as Medicare is destroyed thanks to “Obama-care”.

This isn’t just taking some numbers out of context, or putting a spin on various provisions of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, passed earlier this year. It’s much worse. They are telling outright lies. Never one to take it all for granted or at face value - unlike most so-called ‘conservatives’ - I went to the assessments provided by the Chief Actuary of the Department of Health & Human Services. It’s not gripping reading, but I wade through this stuff anyway. Although I may not be the most sophisticated in reading a lot of statistical information and graphs, I can understand some basics like money saved over a period of time.

Medicare is going to save a boatload of money under the PPAC Act. A vertible, verifiable boatload. In excess of $500 billion, in fact, over the course of the next nine years. Much of these savings will be in the form of much needed reform of widely reported fraud and waste within the system.

Why would anybody fight that? Citizens wouldn’t if they would simply read the actual numbers. The insurance and private hospital industry and their lobbying groups would.

They stand to be cut out of the rich feeding frenzy they’ve had for too many years - unregulated and all theirs for the taking.

Are you willing to just sit there and let corporate America take away hard won gains toward a rational, democratic and modern healthcare system?

Can you just read through the real facts and disseminate them to everybody you know? Especially to all the senior citizens you know - since they are the unwitting targets of these front groups employed by the GOP corporate machine.

Here are the resources you need to fight back:

HealthCare for America Now - point by point on what the Act will and won’t do, despite GOP claims to the contrary.

Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act - a rundown/ClifNotes of what the Act really says.

Americans United for Change - read the press release regarding the memo that was sent to frighten seniors in Ohio. Remember, what gets around in Ohio, gets around everywhere these days - including Nevada.

And, while you’re at it, check out the people behind the 60 Plus Association. Read the resume of James L. Martin, their Director. Note the curious gap in it - like 23 years. His claims of achievement seem to center around his Korean War experience and his involvement in 60 Plus. What the hell was he doing in between … besides wagging his finger at us?

Their President, Amy Noone Frederick seems to be a bit light in the resume department as well, but we know that she loves to cook, run, golf an sail.

Finally, their national spokesperson is Pat Boone. Doesn’t that just tell it all?

And remember, thanks to the horrible SCOTUS Citizens United decision, we aren’t able to know who is funding the 60 Plus Association.