Insurance Lobby Reverses Course, Prepares To Smear Key Element Of Obama’s Health Reform

Last week, the health insurance lobby met with President Obama and pledged to “work together” to provide quality, affordable coverage and access for every American. In less than five days, the insurers not only broke that promise, but the Washington Post reports that Blue Cross Blue Shield of North Carolina has drafted ads aimed at smearing the President’s proposed public health insurance plan.

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 leader of the trade group representing the health insurance lobby, Karen Ignagni, made headlines earlier this year when she promised to the President, “you have our commitment, to play, to contribute and to pass health care reform this year.” Curiously, the date on the ad storyboard is May 9th, meaning that at least one major health insurance company has been secretly planning to assault health reform for several weeks.

The strategy is stunningly reminiscent of the last attempt to reform the system in 1993. As Igor Volsky has noted, the insurance industry made a public relations push to appear to be on the side of reform at the outset of the debate in 1992/1993, but then quickly reversed course and fought bitterly to kill health reform. Back then, the health lobby spent millions flooding the airwaves with deceptive commercials, paying astroturf firms to fabricate public opposition to reform, and hiring lobbyists to defeat reform.

Not only is the health industry operating from the same playbook from 1993, it’s being run by largely the same characters. Frank Luntz, who helped guide Republican efforts to defeat Clinton’s health plan, is currently being paid by health insurance companies like Blue Cross Blue Shield while also advising Congressional Republicans on what type of language to use to defeat health care reform.

Notably, Luntz, Blue Cross Blue Shield, and groups like Conservatives for Patients’ Rights are all attacking a public health care option with the debunked notion of “rationed care.” But of course, Obama’s health care plan option is just that, optional. If Americans prefer having insurance companies determine their treatments and costs, no one is forcing them to change. Opponents of reform would prefer to have a monopoly over health care, because the status quo is still quite profitable.