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Generation Opportunity, New Koch-Funded Front, Says Youth Are Better Off Uninsured

Lee Fang on September 19, 2013 - 1:27 PM ET


(REUTERS/Jim Young)

For a new Koch-funded front group for young people, money for medical bills apparently grows on trees.

Generation Opportunity, a nonprofit financed with $5.04 million .. http://www.prwatch.org/news/2013/09/12247/breaking-new-list-dark-money-shell-game-groups-connected-kochs .. from a fund controlled by the Koch brothers’ lobbying team, just launched a new television advertisement to kick off an anti-Obamacare campaign. The ads, which provides no actual information about healthcare reform and instead seem designed to scare people away from doctor visits, have already been dissected .. http://www.salon.com/2013/09/19/koch_backed_conservatives_go_pro_cervical_cancer/ .. by many .. http://www.thenation.com/blog/176263/creepiest-anti-obamacare-commercial-ever-young-woman-visits-doctor .. in the media. What’s more revealing is Generation Opportunity’s real agenda, which was explained .. http://news.yahoo.com/obamacare-battle-moves-to-college-campuses-200027191.html .. to Yahoo News in a story unveiling the new campaign (emphasis added):

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Their message: You don’t have to sign up for Obamacare. “What we’re trying to communicate is, ‘No, you’re actually not required to buy health insurance,’” Generation Opportunity President Evan Feinberg told Yahoo News in an interview about the campaign. “You might have to pay a fine, but that’s going to be cheaper for you and better for you.”
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So, the big idea here is that young people should decline health insurance? Having no health insurance is “better for you?” When a car accident happens, or someone is sent to the hospital needing critical care, who picks up the bill? For slash-and-burn Koch groups, that doesn’t seem to matter.

Notably, the young men and women hired .. http://generationopportunity.org/staff/#axzz2fLDCX4Jt .. by Generation Opportunity are provided health insurance, says organization’s communications director David Pasch, who spoke to TheNation.com over the phone. Lucky them.

Ethan Rome, the executive director of Health Care for America Now, says young Americans without health insurance will be “buried by bills and unable to recover for the rest of their lives.” “What they’re advocating is seriously unconscionable,” says Rome in response to Generation Opportunity’s call for youth to go uninsured.

Generation Opportunity also told Yahoo News that it will be passing out pizza and hosting tailgate parties to promote its campaign of opposing health insurance.

These antics, of course, are nothing new for the Koch brothers and their endless array of front groups. In the nineties, Koch-funded fronts fought .. http://www.pbs.org/newshour/forum/may96/background/health_debate_page3.html .. healthcare reform by sponsoring a “broken-down bus wreathed in red tape symbolizing government bureaucracy and hitched to a tow truck labeled, ‘This is Clinton Health Care.’?” They also fought environmental regulations, from acid rain to industrial air pollutants, not through sound policy arguments but by sponsoring populist-appearing agit-prop .. http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2010/04/01/174612/koch-pollution-astroturf-2deca/ . More recently, Koch fronts have paid for moonbounces .. http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2010/11/08/174838/koch-epa-regulations/ .. and other festival-type forms of outreach to lobby on issues critical to Koch Industries’ bottom line, like weakening the Environmental Protection Agency rules that affect Koch-owned facilities.

In the end, Koch operatives seem willing to use any marketing device that works, regardless of the truth or how it might affect regular people. In this case, encouraging young Americans to abandon health insurance is worth scoring political points against healthcare reform.

http://www.thenation.com/blog/176269/generation-opportunity-new-koch-funded-front-says-youth-are-better-uninsured#axzz2fNmttvUC

See also:

Wingnut logic...

Uninsured Blogger Gets Hospitalized, Friend Says Donations Will Help Pay For Daughters’ Dance Lessons

If you don’t follow the blogosphere closely, you may not be familiar with the case of Caleb Howe. Caleb is a conservative blogger who writes for RedState.com, and who wound up in a North Carolina hospital in July, in critical condition due to a failing liver. Thankfully Caleb is on his way to recovery now, and is “working hard on healing.” We certainly wish him a complete and speedy recovery.

Sites as diverse as ThinkProgress and Breitbart.com have put out the call for donations to a fund that has been set up to help Howe with his expenses. All well and good. This is America, after all, and Americans step up for each other in hard times. RedState’s boss Erick Erickson made it clear in his appeal that the donations would be for the benefit of Caleb’s family, but he left out one detail: Howe has no medical insurance.

Howe’s friend and fellow blogger Melissa Clouthier explains how the donations will help:
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