Conservatives For Patients Rights Full-Page Ad: Obama, Show Us The Details Of Your Plan
Conservatives For Patients Rights Full-Page Ad: Obama, Show Us The Details Of Your Plan
Today, President Obama kicks off his effort to reform the health care system with a White House Health Summit. The administration is billing the event as an effort to bring the different stakeholders — the insurance industry, drug makers, business groups and consumer advocates — all into one room to agree on common principles of reform.
The Obama administration has vowed to inject transparency into the reform process and has indicated (in its budget and elsewhere) that it is open to considering Republican proposals. In fact, all of the major stakeholders have expressed enthusiasm for the Summit:
- Bill Gradison, ran old Harry & Louise ads: My impression is that there’s been a real openness to reach out to diverse interests, not leaving anyone out — which is how a lot of people felt back in the 1990s. . . . They seem to have learned the lessons of what not to do this time.” [WP, 3/5/2009]
- Karen Ignagni, AHIP: The stakeholder community is no longer organizing to say ‘no.’ [USA TODAY, 3/5/2009]
- Chip Kahn, Federation of American Hospitals: “This is a different day. I think among most of the stakeholders, everyone wants to see this work. There is a tremendous feeling that it’s time.” [AP, 3/5/2009]
The camaraderie may be short lived. If the final solution is seen as threatening to industry profits, some stakeholders will likely fund their own front groups to attack reform. But for now at least, the gang is sticking together. Everyone wants a seat at the table to influence the final legislation.
Unfortunately, conservative ideologues are playing a different game. The Heritage Foundation, Betsy McCaughey, Rush Limbaugh, the Drudge Report, and Fox News (among others) are actively misrepresenting Obama’s proposal.
Today, Conservatives for Patients’ Rights, the $20 million smear effort funded by disgraced Columbia/HCA Healthcare CEO Richard Scott, published a full-page ‘Open Letter To President Obama’ in the Washington Post.
The letter accuses Obama of providing “virtually no details on your [health care] plan itself,” recycles the Right’s big-government talking points, and asks the president to share the details of his plan to “allay our fears and end the speculation.”
Of course, if detailing the plan could stop the attacks, then Scott can click the ‘Plans’ tab on his own group’s website and download Obama’s proposal or Sen. Max Baucus’ (D-MT) 98-page vision for reform.
But the details of the plan won’t matter. The Right will continue to box Obama’s proposal (which actually incorporates the values of competition and choice) into a familiar big-government narrative. The goal here is to echo the same message of attack (over and over again) and hope it sticks. Define Obama’s proposal before he can define it himself.
Today, the administration begins its pushback.
4 Responses to “Conservatives For Patients Rights Full-Page Ad: Obama, Show Us The Details Of Your Plan”
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Nancy Ann DeParle’s stock holdings dwarf the few biotech shares owned by Betsy McCaughey. Why aren’t they a concern for TP/WR?
With over 25 years in healthcare and having worked for HCA and Triad, I’m very concerned about Ms. DeParle’s for-profit healthcare role the last nine years. She served on executive compensation committees and believes in pay for performance.
It imploded Wall Street and will do the same for health care and education.
March 5th, 2009 at 11:38 amThe private health insurance companies took thier seats at the table to make sure their profits are not adversely affected by any legislation agreed upon.
March 5th, 2009 at 4:15 pmHold onto your wallets. This health summit is all show. Nothing will change.
The private health insurance companies took their seats at the table to make sure their profits are not adversely affected by any legislation agreed upon.
March 5th, 2009 at 4:16 pmHold onto your wallets. This health summit is all show. Nothing will change.
We’re certainly not running out of apologists for government run health care. Here’s something to consider. Look at how well the Soviet Union worked. See how many Cubans have fled Castro’s workers’ paradise in Cuba. Read how the communist Chinese are abandoning state controlled economy for free market capitalism. It is a sad and sorry state of affairs that American education has brainwashed two generations of Americans into being ignorant of their country’s history, economic success, and societal values. With recent historical evidence of the failure of state run economies as glaring examples, the notions propagated by fools and liars like Michael Moore have become common place talking points. Moore is a man from a working class background who has made MILLIONS through the free market economy, who claims with a straight face, that healthcare in Cuba, is superior to that in the U.S. The distraction about the cost of health insurance, is a ruse to ignore the evidence of rationed health care in Europe, Cuba, Canada, ad infinitum. The reality is that ANY person who goes into a hospital WILL BE CARED FOR. That just doesn’t happen when waiting lists, and rationing is placed in the hands of bureaucrats. A society that uses semantics to disguise the killing of its most innocent citizens as a “right” of another person, has crossed the Rubicon. Euthanizing the elderly or denying treatment, as a utilitarian cost-cutting method, is how your government will solve not only the “health care issue”, but will make Social Security solvent. Wake up folks. You’ve bought into a lunacy that has nothing but tragic endings for each of us. The cost of health insurance pales in comparison to the cost of stupidity.
March 21st, 2009 at 11:54 am