‘Real people’ props in health wrangle

WASHINGTON - In the Republican response to the State of the Union address, Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers of Washington lamented the travails of “Bette in Spokane,” whose insurance policy had been canceled because of the health-care law and who faced huge premium increases to replace it.

The reality for Bette Grenier of Chattaroy, Wash., was more complicated.

She did dash off an angry letter to McMorris Rodgers, her congressman, in September, but on further exploration Grenier’s options were wider than she had thought. She qualified for a subsidized insurance plan through the health-care law, an option she opposed philosophically. Instead, she bought insurance through a Christian ministry that is cheaper and better than her canceled policy. Since her star turn, she has been harassed and mocked by “some pretty mean people,” she said.

The “real people” political prop is a durable ingredient in politics, first popularized at the State of the Union address when Ronald Reagan invited Lenny Skutnik, who had dived into the icy Potomac River to rescue victims of a plane crash, to serve as an example of heroism. It is a trope that every president since has used. But with the continuing fight over health care, it has become a blood sport for both parties. Every real face is fact-checked, every perceived distortion attacked. And real people have been caught in the crossfire.

Democrats say constituent service has yielded to something like constituent exploitation.

“Did McMorris Rodgers do anything to help Bette, her constituent, navigate the options made available to her through the Affordable Care Act and encourage her to find an affordable alternative on Washington state’s individual marketplace?” asked the office of Rep. Nancy Pelosi of California, the minority leader. “Or did McMorris Rodgers choose instead to turn her ‘into a poster woman for Obamacare victimization?’”

McMorris Rodgers has taken heat for her story. Pelosi called on her to apologize. The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee called the tale a lie. The congressman said she only had been taking a constituent’s letter at face value.

“She had contacted the office. She had said, ‘You know what? This is the plan I used to have. It’s no longer available, and I’m facing significant premium increases,’ and there are many like that,” McMorris Rodgers, the chairman of the House Republican Conference, said of Grenier. “I make it a priority to help my constituents every day in my office.”

Sen. Roy Blunt, R-Mo., who on Thursday went to the Senate floor to tell horror stories about the health-care law, said, “It’s a legitimate question: What are you doing to help? And the answer is: everything possible. But there aren’t many avenues to help.”

The scrutiny has gone both ways. In 2010, President Barack Obama visited the Falls Church, Va., home of Paul Brayshaw, a hemophiliac, to highlight how the health-care law would protect people with expensive medical conditions who would no longer be threatened with lifetime coverage caps from their insurance companies. But Brayshaw has new worries. The narrow networks of providers in the offered plans could force him to move to another state or travel great distances for care, he said.

“An important gap has been covered for me,” he said, “but I’m left still with potentially big unmet needs.”

In another case, Edie Littlefield Sundby, a Californian battling cancer, went public with her struggles to maintain a health policy that would afford her the flexibility to pursue treatment. Dan Pfeiffer, a White House senior adviser, posted on Twitter that her real problems stemmed from her insurance company’s misdeeds, not the health-care law. That brought angry charges of heartlessness from Republicans and conservative activists.

But Republicans have made publicizing horror stories an organized effort, instructing House members to collect, collate and disseminate constituent complaints broadly, as much as Democrats have tried to highlight the program’s successes. A website run by McMorris Rodgers has collected hundreds of tales of woe, while House Republicans have been urged to “encourage your constituents to submit feedback of their own experiences.”

That has led to a cycle of fact-checking and castigation that often puts constituents under an unwelcome public glare. Grenier said she had gotten phone calls at home from people calling her a deadbeat, a freeloader and worse. Democrats say the aim is to poison the atmosphere, scare constituents away from the health-care exchanges and sabotage the law’s implementation.