Harry and Louise Are Back: Insurers Planning on Double-Crossing Obama

According to new information obtained by the Washington Post:

One week after the nation's health insurance lobby pledged to President Obama to do what it can to constrain rising health costs, Blue Cross Blue Shield of North Carolina is putting the finishing touches on a public message campaign aimed at killing a key plank in Obama's reform platform.

As part of what it calls an "informational website," the company has hired an outside PR company to make a series of videos sounding the alarm about a government-sponsored health insurance option, known as the public plan. Obama has consistently maintained that a government-run plan, absent high-paid executives and the need for profits, could be a more affordable option for Americans who have trouble purchasing private insurance. The industry argues that creating a public insurance program will undermine the marketplace and eventually lead to a single-payer style system.

Somehow, this isn't surprising. On Friday, the health insurance industry showed how un-serious they were about really controlling costs by backing away from the promise they made to President Obama. And now, the same industry is planning on making videos (which can be turned into ads) to try and kill the public health insurance option, the only real way to control costs.

Check out the storyboards from their proposed ads [pdf]. The message is right out of the Frank Luntz playbook - scaring the public about the dangers of "government-run health care," and lying by omission about the fact that Obama's health care plan wouldn't force anyone to choose a public health care plan if they didn't want one.

Up until now, the disgraced CEO Rick Scott was the only one up on the air against Obama's health care reform plans. Not even Republicans had a coordinated message to attack health care, at least not until Frank Luntz came along. But now, it looks like the message carried by Harry and Louise might be returning, once again payed for by an insurance industry desperately looking for any way to protect their profits in the face of competition and reform.

Comments

[vippy]

Obama will backtrack on this one, too! I don't have any hope that America will join the 20th century
to become a "progressive" democracy. We are an oligarchy and it will stay that way. Just look how we
elect people for office. Millions raised, millions disappearing in someone's pocket. Money rules!
Out of our reach!

[Sloane7]

Not surprised at all by this. The health insurance companies have had an unbelievable advantage, they can do anything they want. The only thing they need to do is keep Congress happy with lobbyists because Congress is not their customer, they have their own insurance paid by you and I. It's gloves off time on health reform. These guys will pull no punches, they are fighting for their yachts. While we lose insurance if we file a claim.

[ohmetoo]

OK they can't manage this so SINGLE PAYER now, save the rigmarole!

[Seattlelite]

Well this is no surprise..­..however, I do believe this is one time they're not going to be successful because unlike in the pass the American people are engaged and watching and making their voices heard. Keep it up the pressure America, we can do this health care thing!!

[indy girl]

Blue Cross Blue Shield sucks--they have raised my rates every year for the past three years, even though they have not had to pay ANY medical charges for me.

[bonnywide]

What do you expect these insurance guys to do? They don't want to lower costs. No doubt, if there were a cure found for cancer, there would be some idiots, like insurance companies and republicans, rushing to undermine the cure and bury it because it hurt the chemotherapy industry. That's the way they think. They have NO interest in making health care more affordable, more efficient, and less necessary. Don't threaten the system that feeds the fat cats.

[TJCole]

America's Health Care is rated 37th by the World Health organizati­on...

"Guantanamo detainees have better health care, than Americans do..!"

Senator John Ensign

[Halter]

They don't want to play? Do not pass go, do not collect $100.-Run don't walk to a single payer plan.

[YunekFlava]

We need to boycott the companies that are pulling out. Stay at the table and hammer this madness out. If BC/BS decides to pull out, then I'm taking my insurance elsewhere, you better believe it.

[kylie]

The insurance companies and pharmaceutical companies see the big profit going out of their collective companies.
They are not around to aid mankind, but to make themselves perpetually wealthy and powerful at all costs.
Hopefully, the Nation is more aware of the billions that will go into putting phony scare ads on t.v.
Too bad the networks aren't profiteering, too by the ins. /pharm. sponsers --maybe they would provide facts to allow the whole nation to have healthcare.

[Jimmy1920]

It is a shame that the United States seems to hold more sacred the right to shoot someone than the right to be healed.
It is a shame that in the United States the interest of the American workers is secondary to the interest of the health care economy.
We need a system where health care serves American workers and the American economy.
The tragic stories among the 40 -70 million uninsured and under-insured are not just stories of economic and emotional hardship. They are stories of Americans who have been denied the opportunity to contribute to the American economy.
It's time we stopped letting the insurance companies frame this issue as an insurance issue. It is an economic development and workforce development issue.
Is there something wrong with this thinking?
Those who support the single payer or even the public plan option need to be contacting their legislators THIS WEEK.
http://thehealthcaremaze.wordpress.com

[mrh3]

Without a public plan, healthcare reform is a non starter for me.Maybe I'll just stay home in 2010. The rest of the plan just seems to be a big federal money shovel for the insurance companies.

[kylie]

When government controlled the insurance companies and pharmaceutical companies, the coverage was Better and the Prices were reasonable.
Yea, it's been so much better to have Corporate in the mix.

[Fired-Chronically-Sick]

I am a 56 year old professional with master degrees and many years of experience in my industry & for 19 years plus I worked for the same large corporation that just terminated me from employment because I was diagnosed with a blood cancer.

My family and I have lost medical coverage because of this and at a time when I need it the most. I would like to continue buying the same insurance even with the termination but I can not do so because I am excluded from group employment. I have lost all my rights to buy insurance like everyone else and with pre-existing medical problems nobody will insure me (or my family which depended on me).

At the very least, because I worked all my life and have never been unemployed, I should have been allowed to keep my insurance that I had while I was healthy. When I tell my friends overseas what my employer, Sun Chemical Corporation has done with me, they all say it is illegal in their country and it is a total horror that our society has chosen to discriminate so savagely against the sick and those unfortunate to lose their employment.

It is a travesty that corporations and health insurance companies collude to cleanse their ranks of those that are sick and those that are getting old as it has happened at Sun Chemical Corporation a multinational division of Dainippon Ink & Chemicals a Japanese conglomerate.

email: [e-mail]

[Sloane7]

I am so sorry and hope there is some sort o alternative for you found very soon - for you and your family's sake. This is why we have to hang solidly behind healthcare reform. Personally, I would prefer single payer because these guys do not want to reform, they want to continue holding everyone's health hostage. What you're going through is awful. Please take care...so sorry...

[mitsie]

Come on folks, let's get some action going, contact your Rep and tell them we demand healthcare reform, that we don't believe that it's right to turn patients who are dying with cancer, away from the clinics, but allowing those with insurance to remain.

We want health insurance reform, we don't want our hospitals to be for profit. Think about it, how can we keep health care prices down, when these big corporations that own the hospitals, want to get millions of dollars for compensation for their CEO's. WE NEED TO TAKE CONTROL AN DEMAND THIS>

[Mugzi]

Sign petitions, lots of 1payer.net.."1payer.net" has many different petitions to sign and they are e-faxed to congressmen, white house, there is a short video by Mike Farrell. There's others probably. Sign them all!!! They have thousands, but need hundreds of thousands!

[jbeckner]

My disabled daughter is Autistic. She is a poster child for what is wrong with our nations health insurance system and Blue Cross in particular. I have a Blue Cross health plan for her that is terrible. It is a high deductible major medical Blue Cross plan that costs me a lot of money, both in premiums and deductibles. They won't give me a better plan because of her pre-existing conditions.

[Adi Jaffe]

Dear J,
It's exactly stories like you that need to get out in front of this thing and bury Blue Cross in their hypocritical "we provide better service" grave.

Just like so many scare-tactic politicing, these ads are nothing more than a mirror aimed outward. The private insurance industry is broken because there are really no better options.

If they want to survive, they're just going to have to do better...

As far as I'm concerned, no one will be upset if they don't.