To the Editor:

Watching the NLCS baseball game tonight, I saw an ad making fantastic claims about the recent health care insurance reform bill as reasons to vote against Chris Murphy. The ad was brought to you by a shadow group linked to Karl Rove and funded by a bunch of undisclosed donors, but the board of the group, according to its website, includes mostly CEOs and Republican ex-politicians.

Chris Murphy has done an excellent job as Congressman representing this district. I’ve seen him taking constituent questions multiple times out front of the Stop & Shop at Sand Hill Plaza in the last few years. I can’t ever remember seeing a major elected figure doing that. Despite Republican claims to the contrary, the majority of the work done in the last two years by the Democrats in the House, including Rep Murphy, and Senate have been attempts to clean up the disaster left by Bush and the Republicans in the face of unprincipled and unprecedented obstruction by Republicans in the Senate.

Most of the health care insurance reform bill’s major benefits (none of which are mentioned in the Republican group’s ad) have not yet taken effect, so many people might not be aware of what the legislation does do. Because of Rep Murphy’s vote on health care insurance reform, children will be able to stay on their parents’ health care until age 26, preexisting conditions will no longer disqualify you from coverage, numerous insurer abuses will be curbed, premium inflation is expected to be substantially curbed, fewer people will be forced into bankruptcy by unexpected medical bills, and, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, the budget deficit is expected to decrease.

I intend to vote for Chris Murphy in a couple weeks, and I hope that others join me in not rewarding the Republicans recent bad behavior and past bad governance.

Russ Anderson

Great Ring Road, Sandy Hook                                   October 17, 2010