"New Health Care Ad Hits Insurance Companies, Pressures Dem Senators" (with video)

Greg Sargent, with video (00:31):

Yesterday’s big White House powwow on health care, where the insurance and medical lobby vowed to help rein in health care spending en route to reform, has aroused suspicions that these groups are positioning themselves to undermine from within the push for a public insurance option.

So the pro-reform group Health Care For America Now is already going up on the air in multiple states with this new spot that says the only way to weaken the insurance industry’s power is to give people the option of a public plan as an alternative to private insurance:

The ad is running in the states of nine Dem Senators who haven’t yet signed on to a public option (the above version targets Arlen Specter) and pressures them to get with that program.

The spot features a doctor strongly emphasizing that the public plan option will mean patients are no longer at the “mercy” of the insurance industry and will give patients the freedom to make health care choices in consultation with their doctors. It’s push-back against two anti-reform arguments — that reform will deny you choice and de-personalize your relationship with your doctor.

If nothing else, the ad is a sign that yesterday’s gathering was a kind of starting gun for the fight over whether to include a public option, which some see as the only route to real reform.