I agree. Well done. Thanks for posting as I don't watch TV.

"The unexpected coalition of groups financing the effort" are big Washington lobby groups who represent powerful groups. As usual the voice of the common citizen is being drowned out.

I'm not sure that such a revolutionary message that seeks to destroy the most profitable medical insurance industry the world has ever known with government-run death squads will be acceptable to the private broadcasters controlling the public airwaves.

I fear this is too little too late. Obama tried to slow-roll healthcare reform the same way he slow-rolled the election. But he took too long to get into the game and left too much up to Congress. Now he and supporters of reform are left to play catch-up against a Tsumai of lies and misinformation.

Am enjoying the hooha since the wingnuts bought Stephen Hawkins into the health care debate. Hope you all can go to Twitter I love NHS, even Gordon Brown & wife are getting into it. Never ever smear our NHS.

Steve those VO guys usually just go where the money is. You can hear them doing Repub ads and Dem ads as long as the price is right.

"Health Insurance Reform"

Wake up. THis is a boondoggle.

I consider this very promising. Calm, reasonable, no shouting, and micro not macro--here's what it does for YOU. More like this please, a LOT more.

This is why Obama made the deal with the pharma and healthcare companies. If he hadn't this would have been $120 million against reform instead of $12 million for.

Look at the money being spent to convince people that the government is actually trying to help them. Think of what that money, the healthcare lobbyists money, and the money spent on buses and signs could have done.

Such an incredible waste. It's all just gotten so very, very insane.

Beware the Ides of August

thorin-1: I fear this is too little too late.

I don't think so.

The good news is that the nutcases have shot their load.
The better news is that there is a ton of time to wash the sticky mess off...

We've had two weeks of this rancorous chorus being sprayed at everyone willy-nilly. People aren't just saturated with it, they have grown ill of it. A backlash is coming. The nastly little children aren't going to have the mikes for much longer...

I think the Dems should try the fear mongering approach.

14,000 Americans lose their health insurance every day. What would you do if you lost your health insurance?

Spotlight a horror story: Our company isn't doing so well and I am worried that I will lose my insurance. My kid has a pre-existing condition. The bills would bankrupt us. I'm really scared."

Protect against losing health insurance for YOUR family. Support health care reform.

Grinning cat do you even have the remotest idea of what the definition of the word "boondoggle' is?
WTF. Maybe we should all just stick our collective heads in the sand because there's no problem with health care in this country. The insurance companys will just take care of us and treat us fair and square.
Your either completely brain dead or your paid by an insurance company.

14,000 Americans lose their health insurance every day. What would you do if you lost your health insurance?

Blame colored people, silly. This is America.

I think bakho nails it. That ad would work.

while i want real reform, the fact that phrma is in the mix is extremely troubling.....

robert reich had a good piece on why this particular quid pro quo [concessions from the government on pending legislation = ad dollars] on public radio's marketplace last night:

"The deal could set a terrible precedent. How soon will it be until big industries and their Washington lobbyists are so politically powerful that secret White House industry deals like this are prerequisites to any important piece of legislation? And when will it become standard practice that such deals come with hundreds of millions of dollars of industry-sponsored TV ads designed to persuade the public that the legislation is in the public's interest?"

http://marketplace.publicradio.org/display/web/2009/08/12/pm-reich/

I don't know what the fuck SEIU is thinking, getting into bed with that crowd, but if the AMA and PhRMA think this new "reform" deal is great, it's obvious bad, wrong, stupid, dangerous and evil.

I too think bakho is right. That's what people are worried about, losing their insurance. And these days, it can happen to anyone.

It's a good idea to start calling it "health insurance reform" instead of "health care reform." For one thing, it's accurate. What is being reformed is primarily the payment mechanism.

It's also less scary. Health care reform implies major changes to the way health care is delivered - this tends to spook people who are more or less happy with the way things are. But hardly anybody is that wedded to the insurance system - people certainly don't have emotional attachments to insurance companies in the same way they do to doctors or hospitals.

Must-read at HufPo:

Internal Memo Confirms Big Giveaways In White House Deal With Big Pharma

Both sides denying it.

I am not qualified to address the 'strange bedfellows' of the ad- anything Big Pharma is for, I'm agin, etc.

What will be interesting, however, is how the Ranting Right will react: Beck et all have made ACORN/SEIU one and the same, but how will they denigrate the AMA and PhRMA?

-Those are, those are, the guys who sign our paychecks/leave envelopes under our doormats, for F**K sake!

With bedfellows like these, and others like AARP and the nurses association, how do you lose?

dj spellchecka on August 13, 2009 at 3:32 PM

RE: "The deal could set a terrible precedent. How soon will it be until big industries and their Washington lobbyists are so politically powerful that secret White House industry deals like this are prerequisites to any important piece of legislation?

Remember those WH meetings with the big oil reps? And the no bid contracts set up before the Iraq invasion?

Very good and effective ad. As a veteran of the Clinton Health Reform effort, that is quite a coalition they have put together. As they say, politics makes for strange bedfellows.

I'd rather have PhRMA, the AMA and the Federation of American Hospital Systems running ads for health reform than against it.

Bob h - If you isolate the insurers, which is effectively what the Obama Admin is doing, you will win in the end. They just aren't going to go down without a fight.

Everyone forgets that 15 yrs ago no one liked the bill the Clinton Admin put together - not consumer groups, not labor unions, not doctors, not PhRMA, not hospitals. The most vocal anti-health reform groups - doctors, pharma, hospitals - were happy to let the insurance industry do the dirty work and come along for the ride.

It's different this time.

K.I.S.S.

We already have socialized health-care for the very poor and elderly and for what it is costing us now we could cover everyone if it was done more efficiently. If we do nothing it will eat up a much larger percentage of our national budget.

Keep in mind we still have to pay for Medicare part D that the last administration passed.