In an email correspondence to his supporters, Congressman Tom McClintock (R-CA) made his usual pitch that the Affordable Care Act was an awful plague on America. The surprising aspect of the letter was that McClintock focused on another state while completely ignoring California. Doesn’t McClintock represent California any more?
McClintock now seems to represent Maryland
From his recent campaign email:
“It is very clear the public isn’t buying these new government-brokered policies. Some 170,000 people visited the Maryland exchange looking for affordable insurance since it opened more than a week ago. Only 326 have actually bought these plans. That’s less than 2/10ths of one percent.”
Distorting the truth about ACA
It is unfortunate that McClintock plays so fast and loose with the facts and never references where this information came from. In short, he is distorting the facts to bolster his own weak argument that the ACA is a “train wreck” in his estimation.
Here are some questions for my Congressman McClintock.
- Over what time period was the 170,000 visits calculated?
- Is that figure for site visits, page views or “hits” on the website?
- Where did you get these numbers?
- How many of visitors have started applications and are still waiting on verification?
- Do you even know how ecommerce works?
- Why didn’t you mention that Covered California, in your own state enrolled 16,000 households in the first week of operations?
- Why are you concerned about Maryland?
- How many constituents in your district were able to enroll in the new ACA plans?
- How many people have you or your staff helped to enroll in Covered California plans?
McClintock helps only those he agrees with
Obviously, Congressman McClintock is not one Republican representatives cited in a Sacramento Bee article who is putting politics aside to help constituents understand and enroll in Covered California. Perhaps even more shameful is that Tom McClintock is on the Advisory Board of Foundation for Health Coverage Education that runs a website called Coverage for All.
Life long government wage earner
As a government paid congressional representative Tom McClintock needs to spend less time spreading Tea Party propaganda about the state of Maryland and more time actually helping the constituents of the 4th Congressional District in California. Heck, I’ll even speak with the Congressman at any town hall meeting educating people about the Affordable Care Act. That is if Congressman McClintock still represents California and not Maryland.
See also: McClintock shuts down cancer treatment for Michelle Langbehn
Full text of McClintock for Congress email
October 11, 2013
Dear Friends,
On September 30th, after two previous attempts to keep the government fully funded, House Republicans adopted a measure that fully funded the government, fully funded ObamaCare, but simply delayed the individual mandate for a year.
This proposal was summarily rejected by House and Senate Democrats and the government shut down.
I can understand why they might take that position — they actually thought the ObamaCare exchanges would work.
But the ObamaCare exchanges haven’t worked. They have been a complete and unmitigated disaster.
It is very clear the public isn’t buying these new government-brokered policies. Some 170,000 people visited the Maryland exchange looking for affordable insurance since it opened more than a week ago. Only 326 have actually bought these plans. That’s less than 2/10ths of one percent.
Imagine that you have the only store in town, people are required by law to purchase your product, you open for business and 99.8 percent of the customers who walk into your store walk out again without buying your product. Do you think you have a problem?
We can’t pretend this isn’t happening. Millions of Americans right now are losing their health plans and not finding affordable replacements — this matter must be resolved and it must be resolved now.
With this new experience, what is so unreasonable about delaying the individual mandate for a year while these problems are addressed? Isn’t this now a win-win for everyone — re-open the government and give the Democrats’ signature program a one-year reprieve from complete collapse?
That’s what the Republicans offered on September 30th and that offer still stands.
Tom McClintock
###