During a conference call promoting the new Harry and Louise ads, Ron Pollack, the Executive Director of Families USA, revealed that the National Federation of Independent Business — a group which strongly opposed President Clinton’s health reform effort but now promotes changing “the status quo” — supports expanding public health programs:

In the conversation I had with Todd [Stottlemyer]….when I talked about…the problems with private health programs and their failure to meet people who in no doubt need support… I said to him that that it was a top priority for Families USA in terms of seeing change…[to expand public health programs]… He was not aware of that…[I told him] we are going to push really hard for that and he said he would support it.

Stottlemyer’s endorsement of an expansion of public health programs is a significant development and a welcome reversal from the group’s insistence that “Americans should receive their health insurance and healthcare through the private sector.”

Read more about the importance of public programs here.

Our guest blogger is Adam Jentleson, the Communications and Outreach Director for the Hyde Park Project at the Center for American Progress Action Fund.

In their new ad, Harry and Louise – older and more mature than they were in 1993 – seem to go to great pains to stay neutral and avoid favoring either candidate’s position on health care. But despite their efforts to stay neutral, their new ad reveals one of the glaring flaws in John McCain’s radical health care plan.

In the ad, Harry mentions a friend who was recently diagnosed with cancer, but doesn’t have insurance. Under McCain’s plan, this “friend” would find it extremely difficult, even impossible, to get coverage.

Watch it:

Because his employer doesn’t cover him, the friend Harry describes has to shop for health care on the individual market, where he is at the mercy of the insurance companies. Under McCain’s plan, he would stay there, but he would have even less leverage to negotiate a fair deal for himself than he does now – because McCain’s plan would de-regulate the individual market, and give the insurance companies even greater leeway to deny people coverage or hike up their premiums even more.

Under McCain’s plan, the only option for Harry and Louise’s friend would be a high-risk pool – but in practice, high-risk pools have proven woefully ineffective at meeting the needs of people with cancer and other Americans in desperate need of care.

The friend in this ad may be fictional, but his crisis is not. In fact, there are 56 million Americans with chronic conditions who would be at risk of losing their coverage under McCain’s plan, and finding themselves in the exact same situation. Those 56 million Americans are very real – and so is the crisis they could face under John McCain’s health care plan.

Harry and Louise are back, but this time they’re saying that “the status quo is no longer an option.”

Fifteen years after falsely suggesting that President Clinton’s efforts to reform the health care system would undermine existing coverage and leave health care decisions in the hands of government bureaucrats, Harry and Louise — now “older and wiser” — are demanding that the next president “bring everyone to the table and make [health reform] happen.”

Watch both the 1993 and 2008 ads:

Former opponents of Clinton’s health reform locked arms with the plan’s proponents to finance the new ads, which will run on CNN, MSNBC, and Comedy Central during the Democrat and Republican conventions.

The effort is co-sponsored by the Cancer Action Network, American Hospital Association, The Catholic Health Association, Families USA, and the National Federation of Independent Business and is also supported by America’s Health Insurance Plans, the insurance industry front group behind the original advertisements.

AHIP President and CEO Karen Ignagni openly admitted her organization’s change of heart at the unveiling of the new ad and promised to “strongly support the coalition’s activity”:

This is a very different time [than 1993] and we are making a strong commitment…to work collaboratively [with this group].