Reality Check: Americans For Prosperity Health Care Ad
MINNEAPOLIS (WCCO) -- Americans for Prosperity, a nonprofit group, says WCCO-TV was wrong to characterize the group's ad in a former story as "based on a false premise: that the new healthcare law creates a government-run system."
Levi Russell, AFP's director of public affairs, objected: "Our ad doesn't say – or even suggest – that Obama's health care law creates a government run system," he wrote. "It does say that Obamacare moves us closer to a government run system."
He's right.
The 2012 ad featuring disillusioned Canadian patient Shona Holmes does not state the Affordable Care Act "creates" a government run system. We should have said the ad reflects a common, and false, impression that the US health care system may soon be "Canadian style".
The ad leaves a clear and misleading impression that's exactly what's happening, or about to happen, and continues a thread that began before "Obamacare" was passed by Congress in 2009.
In addition to the current AFP ad, we included in our 9/11/2012 Reality Check a 2009 ad by the group Patients United Now, an organization funded by AFP and featuring the same patient, just before Congress voted on health care.
In it, Holmes relates her experience as a narrator lists Canadian health care problems that US patients face if ACA is passed.
"Washington wants to bring Canadian-style health care to the U.S.," the ad says .
