Health law attack ads under the microscope

As congressional races heat up, political ads related to the health law move into the realm of fact-checking and demands for proof.  

The Washington Post's The Fact Checker: An Attack Ad Against Obamacare, Featuring A Man On Medicare
An irritated reader who lives in Michigan wrote The Fact Checker about this ad, which seeks to bolster Rep. Justin Amash (R-Mich.) as a fighter against the Affordable Care Act, a.k.a. Obamacare. The reader asked how such as an elderly-looking gentleman could be on the Affordable Care Act. Instead, the reader surmised, the man must be on Medicare, which is actually a single-payer government-run health care system (Kessler, 2/25).

Fox News: Cancer Patient Defends Obamacare Criticism After Dem Goes After Ad
A Michigan cancer patient is fighting back after her critical claims about Obamacare were called into question by a Democratic congressman, who went so far as to threaten Michigan television stations running her ad.  Julie Boonstra, who was diagnosed five years ago with leukemia, was featured in an ad last week by the conservative Americans for Prosperity. In it, she said her insurance plan was canceled because of the Affordable Care Act, and claimed her out-of-pocket costs are now "so high it's unaffordable." The target of that ad, Michigan Rep. Gary Peters, subsequently had his campaign lawyers write to Michigan TV stations, effectively warning that their FCC licenses could be at risk unless they demanded more proof from AFP (2/24).