Letter - Television ad plays on the worst sort of fear mongering

To the editor:

There is a television ad currently running everywhere, featuring a Canadian, Shona Holmes. She references a condition from which she suffered that she states would have proven fatal if she had not had it treated in the U.S.; because the Canadian health care system would have made her wait months for surgery to fix the problem. She has achieved celebrity and is in demand on FOX and for Republican political ads.

The ad is not truthful and plays on the worst sort of fear mongering. This one is produced and paid for by Patients United Now, a Republican-led group opposed to Obama’s.

There is no doubt Holmes had a problem, and she was given appointments with appropriate specialists in Ontario. She chose not to wait the few months to see them. Her story is a far cry from the life-or-death picture portrayed by Holmes on the TV ads or by Republican politicians and pundits trying to “make hay politically” by telling us a story that has been contradicted by doctors and specialists, both in the U.S. and Canada.

Ms. Holmes is currently suing the Canadian government to cover the expense of treatment in the U.S.

I would remind the reader that if she were a citizen of the U.S., the way the private insurers were allowed to pick and choose before Obamacare, Ms. Holmes would have been denied coverage, priced out of coverage and/or dropped once she became a potentially expensive enrollee.

Believing these deceptive ads will not save us; it is more deceit and avoids the reasons that we needed the Affordable Health-Care Act. Rationing and denial of care were the state of business without the provisions and consumer protections of the AHCA. For more non-partisan information with cited sources to verify the truth, go to: http://www.factcheck.org/2009/08/dying-on-a-wait-list/

Myron Swanberg

Eagle Bend, MN

Tags: opinion, letters