‘Misleading’ Andy Griffith Ads Cost Taxpayers $3 Million, Gov’t Documents Show | CNSnews.com

‘Misleading’ Andy Griffith Ads Cost Taxpayers $3 Million, Gov’t Documents Show | CNSnews.com: "(CNSNews.com) – The federal government spent $3.1 million on TV ads in which actor Andy Griffith touts the new health care law, but a non-partisan watchdog group says those ads are misleading.

Griffith, who played the starring role of a small town sheriff on the Andy Griffith Show in the 1960s and later portrayed an attorney on the 1980s program Matlock, appeared in three ads paid for by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, according to government documents obtained by the conservative public interest group Judicial Watch through the Freedom of Information Act.

The first ad, entitled “1965,” featured Griffith saying, “This year, as always, we’ll have our guaranteed benefits. And with the new health care law, more good things are coming.”

But the non-partisan FactCheck.org says some 10 million Medicare Advantage recipients will see their benefits cut by about $43 a month.

“Currently, about one in every four beneficiaries is enrolled in a Medicare Advantage plan,” said FactCheck.org, a project of the University of Pennsylvania’s Annenberg Public Policy Center.

“For many of them, the words in this ad ring hollow, and the promise that ‘benefits will remain the same’ is just as fictional as the town of Mayberry was when Griffith played the local sheriff,” the group said in an article titled “Mayberry Misleads on Medicare.”

“Even Barney Fife would see that these Obamacare ads are bogus,” said Tom Fitton, president of Judicial Watch, in a statement, referring to the bungling Mayberry deputy sheriff character in the show.

The Obama administration spent a total of $3,184,000 on three ads, according to the Department of Health and Human Services."

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