Conservative group is going on offensive against government-run health coverage
03 03 09 - 12:42
Group launches health care offensive
By JONATHAN MARTIN - Politico
Firing some of the first shots in the coming showdown over health care, a conservative group led by the former owner of the Hospital Corporation of America is beginning a multimillion-dollar campaign Tuesday in opposition to government-run coverage.
Conservatives for Patients Rights is going on TV, radio and the Web in the same week President Barack Obama hosts a health care summit at the White House. The group’s leader, Richard Scott, is hoping a pro-free-market message will rally the right to join the fray on what may be the most hard-fought policy battle in the first year of the new administration.
“If we have more government involvement we’re going to have dramatically worse health care,” said Scott, the wealthy health care executive who is overseeing the effort and seeding it with $5 million of his own cash.
Scott, a major GOP donor, is pushing for four principles to any health care reform package: individual choice, competition between carriers, giving patients’ ownership over their own coverage and rewarding those who make healthy lifestyle choices.
“I want health care reform to happen but I want it the right way,” Scott said.
Toward that goal, Scott’s group is enlisting a group of veteran Republican consultants to fashion a multi-media battle, warning against the move toward more government involvement. The new group starts a three-week TV and radio campaign featuring Scott Tuesday and will plaster the Internet with ads while also launching its homepage.
The goal is to provide conservatives with a central organization to resist any move by Obama and congressional Democrats toward universal coverage. Scott said the group would spend up to $20 million on the campaign, and volunteered that he would consider reaching further into his pocket.
Scott shied away from comparing his effort to the famous industry-led “Harry and Louise” ad campaign that helped torpedo universal coverage in the Clinton administration, saying that while they may receive some aid from health care stakeholders, the “goal is to get support from individuals.”
Scott’s first salvo is being fired Tuesday largely on conservative talk radio shows and on cable news.
“Imagine waking up one day and all your medical decisions are made by a central national board,” Scott says in the radio ad. “Bureaucrats decide the treatments you receive, the drugs you take, even the doctors you see.”
He goes on to raise the prospect of “national boards” and “waiting lists” as in the nationalized systems of Great Britain and Canada. “That’s what some in Washington mean by reform,” Scott says in the spot.