Media Triple Play

I did Jeff Santos' radio show again Wednesday morning. The podcast is here. My antics start about 35 minutes in. You can slide the marker approximately halfway through and then guesstimate from there.

In other non-me news, Chris draws attention to the campaign to get Rick Scott's fear-mongering infomercial off NBC:

Progressive health care reform groups demanded on Thursday that Washington’s NBC television affiliate refuse to air a 30-minute infomercial funded by a conservative group opposed to creating a public insurance plan.

The Service Employees International Union sent a letter to NBC4, arguing that the station has a responsibility to pull the documentary-style commercial paid for by Conservatives for Patients’ Rights. The ad, set to run Sunday after “Meet the Press,” “will be false, deceitful, and a distortion,” the union’s attorney wrote in the letter.

The SEIU has not seen the ad, but is drawing the conclusion from CPR’s record of running “demonstrably false” ads. The station has the duty to protect the public from misleading advertising, the letter argues.

If the ad is aired and does contain falsehoods, CPR could face a fine from the Federal Communications Commission, said Levana Layendecker, the online campaigns director for Health Care for America Now, a coalition pushing to create a public insurance plan.

The coalition, Democracy for America and the SEIU e-mailed their supporters, asking them to sign on to another letter that urges NBC and “Meet the Press” to refuse to air the infomercial. The groups plan to send another e-mail Friday to Washington-area supporters, rallying them to call the station with the same message.

Layendecker said the commercial would demean the venerable public-affairs show’s brand. At the very least, the station should run a crawler under the ad, indicating that the program is a paid advertisement and not endorsed by NBC, she said.

And Think Progress has a new video up called "Who is Rick Scott?" It draws from his past at the center of the Columbia/HCA hospital fraud scandal in the late 90s. Take a look:

Your Ad Here

In my former life as a TV peep, ratings were king. Not for me. I didn't care. But for the men and women (and they were mostly men) above my pay grade. Ratings are truly all TV executives care about. It's why the news covers what it covers. The networks chase each other to get the most viewership because more viewers means more advertising dollars. And within that frame, the coveted demographic is 25-54 yr olds. They're the ones who spend the most money.

Take a look at what the spenders are watching. The numbers (courtesy of mediabistro) are for Tuesday the 26th:



Speaking of advertising, and this JUST happened once again so forgive me for venting, but when our website says we don't respond to solicitations for advertising...we don't. Don't call me and say, "I know you say you don't respond to solicitations, but..." There is no but. The note is not a formality. I had it put there to stop you from bugging me. It could not be more clear. You're not the one exception, and thinking you are will get you the full wrath of my frustration. You've been warned.

UPDATE: I just got a second advertising solicitation in the time it's taken me to finalize this post. This one was sneaky. The business guy tried to frame a meeting around a reporter's faux editorial interest. Really shady. Also, totally ineffective. I'm still not interested, and it's still not going to happen.

So, What's News With You?

While Rick Scott and Ron Pollack reportedly plan to duke it out on Fox and Friends this morning (bizarre Families USA strategy if you ask me, but whatever), HCAN's all over a great NYT piece about health care reform and advertising:

Supporters of a sweeping health care overhaul, like Health Care for America Now, a consumer group, say Congress must ensure coverage for everyone and create a new public insurance plan that would compete directly with private insurers.

(...)

By contrast, just south of the Canadian border, residents of Maine saw a television advertisement this week in favor of a health care overhaul, including the choice of a public insurance plan.

In this commercial, run by Health Care for America Now, Dr. Bethany Picker of Lewiston, Me., says, “Doctors and patients together should be making health care decisions, not the insurance companies.”

In the same advertisement, Dr. Karen Hover, a family physician in Bangor, Me., says, “It’s important that people have a choice between keeping the plan that they are happy with and choosing a public insurance plan.”

In the spot’s final seconds, a message appears on the screen urging viewers to register their support for a public health insurance option with Maine’s senators, Olympia J. Snowe and Susan Collins, both Republicans.

Jacki Schechner, a spokeswoman for Health Care for America Now, said the group had received more than $15 million, most of its money, from a foundation, the Atlantic Philanthropies, with the rest coming from labor unions, civil rights groups and other organizations represented on its steering committee.

The group has also run TV spots this month in six other states: Arkansas, Delaware, Indiana, Nebraska, Oregon and Pennsylvania.

In these advertisements, Dr. Valerie Arkoosh, an anesthesiologist in Philadelphia, says Congress must create “a new public health insurance plan, with good benefits, at a price you can afford, so we’re no longer at the mercy of insurance companies.”

Ms. Schechner said her group had spent $200,000 on television advertisements in the last month.

“We are planning plenty more,” she said. “This is just the beginning.”

Goat Team!

Heard a story on NPR this morning about a bunch of hockey fans in Canada who are buying goats for families in Kenya. Here's a Vancouver Sun write about how the cause got started:

Sitting around Sunday drinking beer, they were talking about growing their playoff goatees when Nagtegaal’s cousin Matthew Beimers — a teacher at Fraser Valley Christian high — reminded them about the goat sponsorship program the school supports, in which families in Sierra Leone receive a goat for every $25 donated.

“It wasn’t long before we moved from goatees to goats and we decided we’d buy a goat for a poor family for every game the Canucks win,” Nagtegaal said.

The group is hoping other fans will join in and pledge to buy a goat for each Canucks victory.

The Toronto Star:

Joel Nagtegaal, a university student from Langley, B.C., and some friends marked the Canucks playoff run by donating goats for each win to a village in Kenya.

The group came up with the goat-giving idea as a play on both the hockey custom of growing a beard or goatee, as well as the chant of "Go Canucks Go."

Nagtegaal created an overwhelmingly popular Facebook group, which then spawned goatcanucksgoat.com.

As a result, 875 goats are now Africa-bound.

Nagtegaal says he has received an email from someone in Kenya and the most rewarding part of the experience has been hearing how the donations are changing lives.

He doesn't know where the charity drive will go from here, although he is considering a "goat for the gold" campaign for the 2010 Winter Olympics.

NPR reported goatees to goats was the result of something getting lost in translation, but now looking through other news reports and the website, the cause seems a little more deliberate than mere drunken miscommunication.

Of course it's a better story if a bunch of intoxicated hockey diehards accidentally committed to donating goats instead of semi-creative facial hair.

Your Homework Assignment

I make it a rule to read everything I find by Atul Gawande. I don't always necessarily agree with or endorse his suggestions, but he is undeniably smart and a very good writer. His latest piece in The New Yorker talks about one of the most expensive health care markets in the country. It's a town called McAllen, Texas, and Dr. Gawande sets out to find out exactly why that is and the lessons it has to teach us about health care reform. Read the whole piece here. It's worth your time.

Politico Today x 2

Democrats, Republicans to address health care

Meanwhile, advocacy groups are organizing town halls, marches and roundtables. Health Care for America Now, a liberal advocacy group, is running a 60-second TV ad in Maine targeting Republican Sens. Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins, who are considered swing votes.

Nancy-Ann DeParle battles old, new critics

The leaked storyboards came just days after the president of the American Hospital Association said the White House misrepresented how much in savings six major healthcare organizations had agreed to find. On Friday, liberal New York Times columnist Paul Krugman wrote about both episodes under the headline “Blue Double Cross.”

Jacki Schechner, a spokeswoman for Health Care for America Now, a coalition of progressive groups pushing for a public plan, said the insurance industry is not going to back off from its opposition, because it stands to lose too much money.

“They got their hand caught in the cookie jar, and now they’re going to eat carrots for a little while but continue to buy cookies. I think you can’t trust them one bit. This was well on its way to being produced, and they caught got,” she said of the videos. “They made it very clear that they oppose giving everybody a choice of a public health insurance plan.”

The Wordsd*ck

I've got plenty of words to describe Frank Luntz - especially after this NYT Magazine interview - but I'll leave the most colorful ones to your imagination. Here are some of the most telling excerpts from yesterday's piece. (My comments are italicized):

Your new 28-page memo, “The Language of Health Care,” was sent to Republicans in Congress and recommends that they speak about health care reform in ominous phrases. For instance, you suggest that they refer to “a Washington takeover.”
“Takeover” is a word that grabs attention. (Yet, a big fat lie)

Is it a correct description of the president’s plans for reform?
We don’t know what he is proposing. We want to avoid “a Washington takeover.” (We know exactly what he's proposing. He's said it over and over and over again. Read a newspaper. Or turn on the news. Fox doesn't count.)

But that’s not at issue. What the Democrats want is for everyone to be able to choose between their old, private health-insurance plan and an all-new, public health-insurance option.
I’m not a policy person. I’m a language person. (Guess what? I do language AND policy. You have to know the latter to accurately craft the former. Although, seeing as how accuracy isn't your concern...)

Who paid you to write the health care memo?
It’s not relevant. (Of course it isn't. Silly us for asking.)

Are you married?
No. I may have perfected the language that gets people to vote certain ways, and buy certain products, but I haven’t perfected the language to get some woman to buy me. (Shock this deep, honest, sincere, well-informed, principled man is still single, eh?)

I'm Toast

To say I desperately need a weekend after the past few days would be an understatement, but if I start to get my hopes up for genuine, berry-free time off, I know I'll just end up miserably disappointed.

However, I do plan to allow myself a handful of hours over the next few days to do things that don't involve health care, Congress, messaging, etc.

A handful of that handful will start this evening. And by evening, I mean as soon as possible.

Have a good one.

My Six Dads

I've got a TV in my office and was just flipping through the channels to pull up something a reporter told me to watch when I passed the following Maury show title:

Help! Which of these 3 men is my baby's father? Pt. 2

Part 2? That's a lot of possible dads.

Spot On

Krugman nails it today. Read the whole thing:

Blue Double Cross
By PAUL KRUGMAN

That didn’t take long. Less than two weeks have passed since much of the medical-industrial complex made a big show of working with President Obama on health care reform — and the double-crossing is already well under way. Indeed, it’s now clear that even as they met with the president, pretending to be cooperative, insurers were gearing up to play the same destructive role they did the last time health reform was on the agenda.

So here’s the question: Will Mr. Obama gloss over the reality of what’s happening, and try to preserve the appearance of cooperation? Or will he honor his own pledge, made back during the campaign, to go on the offensive against special interests if they stand in the way of reform?

The story so far: on May 11 the White House called a news conference to announce that major players in health care, including the American Hospital Association and the lobbying group America’s Health Insurance Plans, had come together to support a national effort to control health care costs.

The fact sheet on the meeting, one has to say, was classic Obama in its message of post-partisanship and, um, hope. “For too long, politics and point-scoring have prevented our country from tackling this growing crisis,” it said, adding, “The American people are eager to put the old Washington ways behind them.”

But just three days later the hospital association insisted that it had not, in fact, promised what the president said it had promised — that it had made no commitment to the administration’s goal of reducing the rate at which health care costs are rising by 1.5 percentage points a year. And the head of the insurance lobby said that the idea was merely to “ramp up” savings, whatever that means.

Meanwhile, the insurance industry is busily lobbying Congress to block one crucial element of health care reform, the public option — that is, offering Americans the right to buy insurance directly from the government as well as from private insurance companies. And at least some insurers are gearing up for a major smear campaign.

On Monday, just a week after the White House photo-op, The Washington Post reported that Blue Cross Blue Shield of North Carolina was preparing to run a series of ads attacking the public option. The planning for this ad campaign must have begun quite some time ago.

The Post has the storyboards for the ads, and they read just like the infamous Harry and Louise ads that helped kill health care reform in 1993. Troubled Americans are shown being denied their choice of doctor, or forced to wait months for appointments, by faceless government bureaucrats. It’s a scary image that might make some sense if private health insurance — which these days comes primarily via HMOs — offered all of us free choice of doctors, with no wait for medical procedures. But my health plan isn’t like that. Is yours?

“We can do a lot better than a government-run health care system,” says a voice-over in one of the ads. To which the obvious response is, if that’s true, why don’t you? Why deny Americans the chance to reject government insurance if it’s really that bad?

For none of the reform proposals currently on the table would force people into a government-run insurance plan. At most they would offer Americans the choice of buying into such a plan.

And the goal of the insurers is to deny Americans that choice. They fear that many people would prefer a government plan to dealing with private insurance companies that, in the real world as opposed to the world of their ads, are more bureaucratic than any government agency, routinely deny clients their choice of doctor, and often refuse to pay for care.

Which brings us back to Mr. Obama.

Back during the Democratic primary campaign, Mr. Obama argued that the Clintons had failed in their 1993 attempt to reform health care because they had been insufficiently inclusive. He promised instead to gather all the stakeholders, including the insurance companies, around a “big table.” And that May 11 event was, of course, intended precisely to show this big-table strategy in action.

But what if interest groups showed up at the big table, then blocked reform? Back then, Mr. Obama assured voters that he would get tough: “If those insurance companies and drug companies start trying to run ads with Harry and Louise, I’ll run my own ads as president. I’ll get on television and say ‘Harry and Louise are lying.’ ”

The question now is whether he really meant it.

The medical-industrial complex has called the president’s bluff. It polished its image by showing up at the big table and promising cooperation, then promptly went back to doing all it can to block real change. The insurers and the drug companies are, in effect, betting that Mr. Obama will be afraid to call them out on their duplicity.

It’s up to Mr. Obama to prove them wrong.

Maine Adtraction

We've got a new ad running in Maine starting today:

Good to Hear

From The Hill:

Kennedy has co-sponsored a resolution introduced by Sen. Sherrod Brown (Ohio) and 26 other Democratic senators that declares the healthcare reform legislation the Senate will consider this summer must include a public plan option people can choose instead of private insurance. Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) also co-sponsored the resolution.

Though purely symbolic, this show of strength by 28 Democratic senators sends a clear signal to liberals that a public plan, one of the left’s top priorities and a component of President Obama’s healthcare platform, will be part of reform.

Truth be told, this write says it better than the actual release which uses the very strange term 'federally-backed insurance pool' which I know means public health insurance option in some weird Congressional language, but it's SO far from any terminology we'd use that I was initially thrown.

Focus, people. Focus.

GOP Fact Free

Politifact has a Truth-O-Meter up addressing some misinformation floating around about health care reform. The big one is this:

Pence appears to be picking the worst number he can choose. And he doesn't mention the fact that under the scenario laid out by the Lewin Group, people would still have health care coverage and their premiums reduced by 30 to 40 percent. He says the government would "deprive" people of health insurance, when actually the scenario is that they would choose a different option.

Even if you believe that an expansive government health care plan would drive private insurers out of business, that still doesn't account for Pence's "deprive" claim because the Lewin report he cites is focused on people who have chosen the government plan, not people who were left to the government plan after private options disappeared.

Finally, we have to include a caveat about the Lewin Group. The group says it operates with editorial independence, but it is a subsidiary of United HealthCare, a private health insurer.

Textual Escapades

How am I just discovering this ?

h/t CF

UPDATE: This is my favorite right now:

(919): so I was just driving high and I stopped to let a pinecone cross the road because I thought it was a hedgehog.

Republican Recycling

If the Republican Congressional health care proposal introduced today sounds familiar, that's because it's pretty much what John McCain tried to sell us back in the fall. Here's Igor Volsky with a longer explanation.

I like Richard's reaction best:

We had an election. Their plan lost.

While You Were Sleeping

This is my day today in a nutshell:

Activists seek Justice Dept. probe of insurers

Groups backing Obama health plan seek antitrust probe of health insurance industry

Ricardo Alonso-Zaldivar, Associated Press Writer
On Wednesday May 20, 2009, 3:19 am EDT

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Activists backing President Barack Obama's health care overhaul are asking the Justice Department to open a wide-ranging investigation of what they say is monopoly-like power in the hands of major insurers.

The move by Health Care for America Now has consequences for the debate on Capitol Hill, since health insurers have been working closely with lawmakers to find a compromise that would expand coverage and curb costs.

The letter sends a message to Democrats that many of their constituents don't trust the industry. Indeed, the activist group is one of the strongest supporters of setting up a government health plan to compete with private insurers.

"A lack of antitrust enforcement has enabled insurers to acquire dominant positions in almost every metropolitan market," said the letter to the Justice Department, signed by Richard Kirsch, the group's director. "The failure to attack anticompetitive practices has enhanced the dominant positions of these insurers. This must be reversed."...

It's going to be a busy one.

Health Care Humor

Email from a traveling coworker: There's a retired doctor here who delivered 11,500 babies during his career and performed 5,000 operations.

Me: Is he retired ...or just tired?

I crack me up.

Singing the Blues

Think Progress has more on the planned North Carolina Blue Cross Blue Shield double cross:

The Post obtained a copy of the story boards for the ads attacking the public plan. The description for one ad depicts a woman trapped in a hallway of locked doors:

[The mother's hand tries another door, as her child begins to get visibly anxious and restless. Still no luck. In rapid-fire succession, we see their hands trying a series of doorknobs. The pair is seen making their way to the next door, as the tension builds. It seems as if their search may be fruitless.]

While “innocent-sounding piano music, vaguely reminiscent of a nursery rhyme” plays in the background of this increasingly dramatic scene, the narrator intones:

“We can do a lot better than a government-run health care system.”

Rather than being an honest partner in the debate on health reform, the health insurance industry appears to be launching a campaign of misinformation aimed at sinking any serious prospect for change.

The whole post is here and worth the read.

Media Matters has more on Blue Cross Blue Shield of North Carolina and the hypocrisy of the ads they're producing. For example:

BCBS Of North Carolina Implied Public Option May Not Cover Preexisting Conditions. The Washington Post obtained storyboards of BlueCross BlueShield of North Carolina advertisements opposed to health care reform. In a crowded gathering, the advertisement viewer will hear, "...pre-existing conditions? Nobody knows yet..." [BlueCross BlueShield of North Carolina ad via Washington Post, 5/18/09]

It is BlueCross Blue Shield of North Carolina that has a history of denying coverage due to preexisting conditions.

They dissect the whole deceptive ad campaign here.

Welcome to the Jungle

Now do you believe the health insurance industry is full of it? Ceci Connolly's got the scoop:

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.

In three 30-second videos, the insurer paints a picture of a future system in which patients wait months for appointments and can't choose their own doctors, according to storyboards of the videos obtained by the Washington Post.

Here are the storyboards. All on the same side, eh?

Jason's got more cross-posted on our blog and HuffPo.

I Want To See Other Plans

When your health insurance isn't satisfying, breaking up is not that hard to do. Michael Maiello explains in Forbes today:

Dump Your Health Insurer

My cheap, lazy, uncaring medical provider isn't worth keeping around.

...I'm one of many who would at least give a public plan a try--and the industry really has no good argument against giving me the choice.

...Some warn that the government will ration care, indiscriminately providing treatment to some patients and not to others. But insurance companies and health maintenance organization already ration care, and they'll ration it even more strictly if the industry tries to keep its promise to save $2 trillion in costs over the next decade.

...One irony of high-deductible plans like mine is that the insurer has an interest in denying coverage--even when the patient will be the one paying. The insurer doesn't ever want the deductible breached, because that's when they start paying. That's rationing too.

...Opponents of the public plan claim, finally, that the government will crowd private insurers out of the market. If people like their insurance companies, this should be impossible. Nobody will sign up for a government plan that costs more than what they're paying now or one that is stingier with services. The government plan will only crowd out private insurers if the government plan is cheaper and more generous...

Read the whole thing here.

Dance Dance Revelation

Happy Monday. It's going to be an insane week on the health care reform front. I can tell already. Tons and tons to do.

But before we transition into full-on work mode, I have to mention that I got to go dancing this weekend, and it was bliss. I forgot how much I love to dance. Not the "get dressed up and stand around looking pretty swaying to the music" dancing people like to do here in DC, but the really gritty true dance we used to do every weekend in NYC.

The DJ wasn't even very good and his transitions were embarrassingly bad, but just being out on the floor felt great.

I fully intend to make those kind of nights happen more often from here on out.

Seeing DC

We took a field trip to the FDR Memorial yesterday after work. I'm embarrassed to admit that not only did I know very little about the memorial, but I also knew less than I probably should about FDR himself. Here's a brief virtual tour of the grounds. They really are quite stunning.

FDR, the car, and the famous quote:



The Great Depression:



The programs of the New Deal (you're meant to touch the wall):



The programs turned inside out (you're meant to touch the columns):



The last two are my favorites. My friend's son was mesmerized and just too cute.

FDR and his dog Fala:



The tribute to Eleanor against the backdrop of one of several amazing waterfalls throughout the memorial:

Speaking of Lying

Rick Scott's claiming Comcast pulled our ad. Yeah. Not so much.

From Comcast:

To clarify – Comcast has not pulled any ads produced by HCAN off our systems. The media buy for the ad in question expired on May 13. Comcast has asked HCAN to include a clarification in future versions of the ad.

From us (HCAN):

Rick Scott’s lawyers fought hard to have the ad taken down to no avail. Nothing was pulled. The ‘Shady’ Rick Scott ad was scheduled to run for one week, and that ad buy ended Wednesday May 13th as planned.

This ad is clearly hitting a nerve. We expect to run it again, and when we do, we will include Comcast’s suggested clarification.

Comcast has asked HCAN to add the HCA logo to a section of the ad to clarify a point regarding HCA’s having to pay the largest health care fraud settlement in history for overbilling Medicare, kickbacks, and falsified procedures.

Here's Jason at HuffPo on the story.

In case you missed it, here's the ad:

You Don't Say?

Oh This is Rich

What's it been, a week? So much for the 'game-changing' voluntary cost controls:

Health Care Leaders Say Obama Overstated Their Promise to Control Costs

After meeting with six major health care organizations, Mr. Obama hailed their cost-cutting promise as historic.

“These groups are voluntarily coming together to make an unprecedented commitment,” Mr. Obama said. “Over the next 10 years, from 2010 to 2019, they are pledging to cut the rate of growth of national health care spending by 1.5 percentage points each year — an amount that’s equal to over $2 trillion.”

Health care leaders who attended the meeting have a different interpretation. They say they agreed to slow health spending in a more gradual way and did not pledge specific year-by-year cuts.

“There’s been a lot of misunderstanding that has caused a lot of consternation among our members,” said Richard J. Umbdenstock, the president of the American Hospital Association. “I’ve spent the better part of the last three days trying to deal with it.”

Take a moment and read the whole thing. It's a classic.

UPDATE: Politico's got it too:

The president of the American Hospital Association said Thursday that a deal with the White House to cut the growth in health care spending has been “spun way away from the original intent.”

(...)

One health care insider said: “It came together more quickly than it should have." A health-care lobbyist said the participants weren’t prepared to go live with the news over the weekend, when the news of a deal, including the $2 trillion savings claim, was announced by White House officials to reporters. The fact sheet they distributed at the time offered general categories from which the savings would come, but few specifics on how they would be achieved.

“This was all a general commitment to be part of bending the cost curve and nobody had specifics and all of sudden right before the weekend hit they said, ‘Get us a list of their specifics,’” the lobbyist said. “What really did come last minute at the end for the week was the White House looking for specific things that these people think would reduce costs.”

But when the day came to announce the offer, representatives from all six organizations were lined up next to the president as he announced the deal.

Here's the thing. Senior Administration officials did a conference call Sunday afternoon to preview Monday's news, and Chris and Carrie are correct that the industry stakeholders stood right by the President as he made the exact same announcement 24 hours later.

I was on that Sunday call, and even when reporters pressed, the Administration officials made what few details they had crystal clear. If something was amiss, there was plenty of time between Sunday at 3pm and Monday at 12:30pm for clarifications, corrections, reframing, etc. In fact, the President met with the industry reps behind closed doors in the hour before the press announcement. They could have even made last minute changes then, but instead, the industry reps all stood with the President and accepted his praise. AHIP went so far as to put out the following statement:

By reducing the rate of growth in health care spending by 1.5% each year, the nation can achieve a savings of $2 trillion over the next decade. This effort will have a direct effect on the budgets of individuals and families and will also go a long way in ensuring that every American have access to affordable, high-quality health care. Stay tuned for more information on this important initiative in the weeks and months ahead.

Now shareholders and corporate investors are freaking out, and the trade groups are panicked and backtracking. Raise your hand if you're surprised. Yeah, me neither. Not even in the slightest.

Rick Gets Rolled

SEIU's got a great video up showing CNN and Fox finally going after Rick Scott's record:

Cartoon Thursday

Tom Toles in the WaPo on the health care industry stakeholders' voluntary cost control offer:

Tri, Tri Again

I don't like to brag, but I'm getting pretty good at this new group weight lifting thing. Yesterday's class focused more on triceps than usual which was excellent considering Operation Arm Strength is the core motivation behind my attendance in the first place.

The only problem with the class is that it's getting really popular (hello bathing suit season), and even though my friend and I get there early enough to stake out decent spots, some latecomer always manages to slide in his/her equipment to the point of invading our dance space.

Oh wait. I lied. There's another problem. The exercise the instructor calls "stair climbers." I have yet to figure out what muscle groups I'm supposed to be targeting and how to do them without feeling completely uncoordinated. And the Interwebs is proving to be useless in researching this particular information.

WaPost

The Washington Post has a new blog tracking the health care debate, and Ceci Connolly wrote a great post about our latest ad:

New Health Reform Ad Touts 'Public Option'
By Ceci Connolly

Worried about your health care being rationed? It already is, says a group of liberal doctors.

The National Physicians Alliance, together with the pro-health-reform umbrella group Health Care for America Now, is spending $200,000 to air television ads in six states where Democratic senators have yet to endorse the idea of creating a government-sponsored health program to compete with private sector insurance.

The so-called "public option" has become an early tension point in the debate over how to remake America's health system. Opponents -- many of them in the health industry -- argue that a government-administered insurance program would lead to a single payer system, complete with tight restrictions on access to care.

"Opponents of reform can try to scare the public with threats of rationing and denied care," says Valerie Arkoosh, the Philadelphia doctor appearing in the 30-second spots. "But we as physicians see health insurance companies rationing and denying care in practice every day."

In the ad, Dr. Arkoosh touts the public plan as good benefits at an affordable price, "so we're no longer at the mercy of insurance companies."

To see the commercial: http://www.healthcareforamericanow.org/doctor.

For The Record

Busy is good. I'm happy to be busy. It means things are heating up as expected. I don't have time to post all of today's press links, but this should give you an idea of what's going on:

NPR:

Health Care for America Now is a coalition of about 1,000 labor unions, progressive groups and other organizations. The gist of the ad is that Scott used to run the big hospital chain HCA, but he was ousted by the board during a federal investigation. It was the biggest health care fraud case in Justice Department history.

"Scott is a very tainted messenger," says Richard Kirsch of Health Care for America Now. "In many ways, it's really reflective of what we think is behind the opposition to health care, which is protecting profits."

But Scott defends his tenure at HCA: "We had great outcomes, we had great patient satisfaction, and nobody ever accused me of doing anything wrong."

Scott says he launched Conservatives for Patients' Rights so people could hear about an alternative to the likely Democratic plan.

"I don't know anybody else that's on the air on the conservative side now," Scott says. "There's not a bill yet. So some people are gonna wait until they know exactly what the bill is."

Kirsch says the question for the industry is: "If what Congress is going to propose is really going to take that much of my money away, do I risk going public against it and blowing up reform, and being attacked by the president for blowing up reform?"

Health Care for America Now will begin airing new ads Tuesday aimed at a handful of potential swing-vote senators.

About those ads, here's ABC's The Note:

From the annals of cooperation and comity: Health Care for America Now is up Tuesday with a new ad in support of a public option. You know the senators who matter since we know the states where the ads will run: Pennsylvania, Nebraska, Oregon, Arkansas, Indiana, and Delaware.

The Atlantic:

Health Care for America Now!, a coalition of progressive groups including Center for American Progress, Americans United for Change, AFL-CIO, SEIU, AFSCME, ACORN, and MoveOn.org, is targeting six senators with TV ads pushing them to support a public-option health care plan. The ads will run in the home states of centrist senators who, as we saw in the stimulus debate, control much of the decision-making power in Congress as potentially the last lawmakers on board with major pieces of the Democratic agenda.

NBC's First Read:

Politico looks at the health-care ad war: “Despite appearances of comity in the health care reform talks, a skirmish among interest groups on both sides of the issue played out on the TV airwaves over the past week. MoveOn.org Civic Action, Health Care for America Now and Conservatives for Patients’ Rights went toe to toe with commercials aimed at influencing a critical week ahead in the negotiations on Capitol Hill. The Senate Finance Committee is scheduled to meet Tuesday and Thursday to discuss financing a health care overhaul and expanding access to insurance coverage, possibly through a public plan option that would compete with private insurers.”

Speaking of… Health Care for America Now will be releasing new TV ads later this morning emphasizing the need for a public health insurance option in health-care reform. The ads will air in the home states of Sens. Arlen Specter (D-PA), Ben Nelson (D-NE), Mike Johanns (R-NE), Ron Wyden (D-OR), Blanche Lincoln (D-AR), Mark Pryor (D-AR), Evan Bayh (D-IN), Richard Lugar (R-IN) and Thomas Carper (D-DE). The ad names the senators in each state who have not yet publicly signed on in support of a public health insurance option.

Soon I shall be off to an undisclosed location where I am unreachable by cell and/or email for a good hour and half. Me time.

News To Me

Best mischaracterization of HCAN so far:

Recently, Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius reassured Republican lawmakers that the Obama administration did not intend to drive private insurers out of business with its Health Care for America Now program, according to news reports. At the same time, the White House told Democrats it was still committed to a government health-insurance option.

Shop Til You Drop

Let's play a game. What's the worst thing to have in your grocery bag when the bottom falls out? Eggs? Pickles?

Tonight's answer: Salsa!

While I am pleased to report the martini olives survived unscathed, I did leave a puddle of picante and glass on the ground outside my local market. Actually, a nearby restaurant owner saw the moment of impact and - feeling sorry for my misfortune - scooped up my groceries and wiped them down while I went back for a new bag. She was very kind, and I was very grateful. Not grateful enough to be amused by her male coworkers' bizarre attempt to get me to "thank them properly with kisses on the cheek" as I was leaving, but appreciative nonetheless.

It's been an exhausting day and an odd evening. I need sleep.

But Wait There's More

CBS Radio just called to chat with Richard. I'm too hyped up to sleep these days anyway so getting a call at 7:45am was actually not a huge deal. I'm sure I will crash later, but for now, all's good. Here's some more HCAN in the news for your perusal:

Bloomberg:

“It’s great to see folks intending to work together to control costs, but the success will depend on actual implementation,” said Richard Kirsch, director of Health Care for America Now, a Washington-based group lobbying for Obama’s health plan and supported by groups including the AFL-CIO, a labor federation representing about 11 million workers.

Supporting cost-cutting doesn’t mean insurers will stop fighting against Obama’s proposal to create a government-run health plan to compete with private insurance companies and help reduce costs, he said.

Powerful Groups Oppose

“There are major features that powerful groups have said they oppose, and these will be issues Congress has to continue to wrestle with,” Kirsch said.

Associated Press:

A look at 10 groups with the most influence, or most at stake, in the health debate, and what they want and are trying to avoid:

The estimated 50 million uninsured people in the U.S. don't have lobbyists, but various advocacy groups aim to speak on their behalf. The liberal group Health Care for America Now says any health overhaul should mean coverage for everyone by including a public plan, basing out-of-pocket costs on ability to pay and providing a standard benefit with preventive care and treatment for serious and chronic diseases.

LATimes:

MoveOn has been joined by other liberal advocacy groups such as Health Care for America Now, which aired its own ad last month promoting a public plan. Last week, it aired a second ad highlighting Scott's former work for healthcare giant Columbia/HCA, which a decade ago paid $1.7 billion to settle fraud charges against the company.

And both WaPo writes made the CNN Ticker:

Washington Post: Health Groups Vow Cost Control
Volunteering to "do our part" to tackle runaway health costs, leading groups in the health-care industry have offered to squeeze $2 trillion in savings from projected increases over the next decade, White House officials said yesterday.

Washington Post: Ex-Hospital CEO Battles Reform Effort
The television ads that began airing last week feature horror stories from Canada and the United Kingdom: Patients who allegedly suffered long waits for surgeries, couldn't get the drugs they needed, or had to come to the United States for treatment.

Make Mine A Double

HCAN's in The Washington Post today. Twice.

Story one:

Advocates for expanding health-care coverage applauded the industry's commitment yesterday.

"We are glad to see major industry trade groups approach the president with an offer to get health-care costs under control in a system that covers everyone, and we appreciate their emphasizing the urgency of health-care reform," said Richard Kirsch, national campaign manager of Health Care for America Now, which calls itself a national grass-roots organization pushing for expanded health-care coverage.

Story two:

In an ad broadcast in the Washington area and in Scott's home town of Naples, Fla., last week, a group called Health Care for America Now says of Scott: "He and his insurance-company friends make millions from the broken system we have now."

The group's national campaign manager, Richard Kirsch, said: "Those attacking reform are really looking to protect their own profits, and he's a perfect messenger for that. His history of making a fortune by destroying quality in the health-care system and ripping off the government is a great example of what's really going on."

Up, Up, and an Upgrade

Continental Airlines took good care of me. I had to sprint to catch my connection, but there was a first class ticket waiting at the gate in Houston. That and knowing I was finally on my way home made the whole delay situation much more tolerable.

It's good to be back. I've got a lot of catching up to do before I can settle into the weekend so this is going to be all for now.

Have a good one.

Air Health Care Day 3

I don't want to sound too negative, but I just agreed to a decision that has the potential to implode in spectacular fashion.

The airline bumped me to a later flight (2 hours) through a different city in exchange for a $300 voucher and a $6 meal ticket. For the record, I didn't volunteer.

Anyway, the new itinerary allegedly gets me into DC only 20 minutes later than the original, but it leaves me with just 25 minutes between touch down and take off to make the transfer between terminals to catch the second flight. Assuming all's on time, they assure me it's totally doable.

I'm skeptical.

For those of you keeping track at home, we're now at 3 completed flights, 1 cancelled flight, 4 rescheduled flights, 3 different airlines, 2 rental cars, 2 hotels (1 dump), 3 cities, and 2 flights to go all in less than 48 hours.

p.s. I've just been reminded that if I don't use my meal ticket here, I can use it in my transfer city. You know, because there will be plenty of time between flights to grab a meal.