Know Five Things

The Issue

• This week, a well-funded right-wing astroturf group unveiled a massive, $20 million radio and TV ad campaign aimed at fighting health care reform.
• Immediately following NBC’s Meet the Press on Sunday, the right-wing group Conservatives for Patients’ Rights (CPR) aired a 30-minute paid advertisement titled “The End of Patients’ Rights: The Human Consequences of Government Run Health Care.” [The Hill]

Know Five Things

1.) The Astroturf Campaign.

• A group called Patients United Now is spending $20 million on a massive radio and television ad campaign to fight new health care reform as outlined by President Obama. [Politico] [WonkRoom]
• Patients United Now is operated and financed by Americans for Prosperity, a right-wing astroturf organization in turn mostly funded by large multinational corporations. [WonkRoom]
• The group also hosted “Drill, Baby, Drill” rallies. [AFP]
• AFP paid for Joe The Plumber’s national tour to attend rallies against the Employees’ Free Choice Act. [ThinkProgress]
• AFP is also behind the tea party campaign, NoStimulus.com, “a grassroots website that we hope will be a focal point for the widespread frustration ordinary Americans feel at the runaway government growth that we see during good economic times and bad.” [NoStimulus.com]

2.) Who Is Richard Scott?

• The group’s head, the right-wing millionaire Richard Scott, is spending $5 million of his own money on the effort.
• Richard Scott is the former CEO of Columbia/HCA Healthcare. In 1997, Scott was forced to resign from the company amid fraud charges. HCA then admitted “to bilking various government programs and agreed to pay a total of $840 million in fines and penalties.”
• The fraud settlement was, at the time, the largest in U.S. history.
• Today, Scott owns an urgent-care company with more than 20 facilities across the U.S.; although he makes money from Medicare and Medicaid, he insists his interest in killing the health-care overhaul is not his personal bottom line. [Forbes] [Politico]

3.) The Swift Boat Connection

• Conservatives for Patients Rights is working with public relations guru Brian Burgess to craft its media strategy. Burgess works for the same PR company, Creative Response Concepts, that managed PR for the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth smear campaign in 2004. [Variety]

4.) What Americans Want:

• Americans overwhelmingly favor new health care reform. A recent CNN poll found 72 percent favor “a program that would increase the federal government’s influence over the country’s health care system in an attempt to lower costs and provide health care coverage to more Americans.”
• A Fox News poll found 66 percent of Americans agree that it is “the responsibility of the federal government” to “make sure all Americans have health care.” [CNN/Opinion Research Corp Poll] [Fox News/Opinion Dynamics]
• Other recent polls show six in 10 think the government should provide health insurance or take responsibility for providing health care to all Americans.” [CNN.com, 3/5/09]

5.) The Straw Man

• CPR ads focus on making people fear any single-payer health care system will be “like Canada.”
• As Jonathan Cohn explains in his book Sick, “The stories about Canada are wildly exaggerated. And the pinched access to services in Britain, at least, isn’t a product of universal health care. It’s a product of universal health care on the cheap.” (The British spend less than half of what the U.S. spends on health care — just 7 percent of their national wealth.) [TNR]

• Cohn: “Relative to the United States, Japan spends about 60 percent as much of its wealth on health care. But the Japanese don’t wait for medical services. And they have more ’stuff.’ In fact, Japan leads the world in the availability of technology such as CT scanners and MRI machines.”

  Ezra Klein: Despite there being wait times for non-essential care in Britain, the outcomes for care do not appear to be worse. [Ezra Klein]

Additional Resources

VIDEO

• Patients United Now anti-reform ads: [PUN]

VIDEO

• Exposing Rick Scott: [ThinkProgress]

“Notes on a Panel,” Ezra Klein, American Prospect, 12-05-08. [American Prospect]

• Excerpt: “..."If you look at waiting times, you’ll see that relatively few Americans wait more than four months for surgery, which helps folks claim that America doesn’t ration care, and makes our system look pretty good on the waiting times metric. Here’s what they don’t tell you: When you look at who foregoes care, the international comparisons reverse themselves. About 23% of Americans report that they didn’t receive care, or get a test due to cost. In Canada, that number is 5.5%....”

“New Anti-Obama Health Care Front Group: Patients United Now.” Health Care For America Now, 05-26-09. [NOW!]

• Excerpt: “...The health care reform proposal from President Obama is not a copy of any other system in the world. We’re not going to become Britain or Canada. With Obama’s proposal, you can keep the insurance you have if you like it, period. Nobody will force you into anything....”

“Conservative Patient Rights Group Launches Attacks On Obama’s Health Plan,” Igor Volsky for The Wonk Room, 03/03/09 [Wonk Room]

• Excerpt: “...it appears that the group’s public relations guru Brian Burgess, is from the same PR firm that managed the Swift Boat Veterans For Truth; launching concocted right-wing fairy tales onto the airwaves is something of a cottage industry for these guys...”

“Health Care Reform Debate Guide,” Center for American Progress Action Fund/ The Wonk Room. [CAPAF]

• Excerpt: “As the 111th Congress considers health care reform, conservatives and their industry allies—so-called opponents of health care reform—will likely embark on a misinformation campaign about the consequences and implications of expanding access to affordable health care coverage. The Wonk Room has compiled and debunked the right wing’s most widely circulated myths about reform.”

“Health Reformers Meet Their Enemy,” Ezra Klein for The American Prospect, 03/03/09 [EzraKlein]

• Excerpt: “If I were a Republican, I’d be ready to slit my wrists at the prospect of former Columbia/HCA Healthcare CEO Rick Scott heading the conservative response to Obama’s health reform effort. This is like liberals getting Franklin Raines to run their economic messaging or Bush tasking Donald Rumsfeld with a comprehensive defense of his administration’s legacy.”

“Reformers: Meet Public Enemy Number On,” Jonathan Cohn for The New Republic, 03/03/09. [Cohn]

• Excerpt: “...the pinched access to services in Britain, at least, isn’t a product of universal health care. It’s a product of universal health care on the cheap. The British spend just 7 percent of their national wealth on health care, less than half of what Americans spend. It’s possible to spend more than that—and get more—while still spending less than the United States does. A perfect example is Japan. Relative to the United States, Japan spends about 60 percent as much of its wealth on health care. But the Japanese don’t wait for medical services. And they have more ’stuff.’ In fact, Japan leads the world in the availability of technology such as CT scanners and MRI machines...”

Play Audio Clips

• VIDEO: Patients United Now anti-reform ads: [PUN]
• VIDEO: Exposing Rick Scott: [ThinkProgress]
• Rick Scott, Conservatives For Patients Rights, radio ad, 03/03/09: “...Imagine, waking up one day and all your medical decisions are made by a central national board, bureaucrats, to decide the treatments you receive...” [Audio, :28.14]
• President Barack Obama on the need for reform, 02/24/09: “...So let there be no doubt: health care reform cannot wait, it must not wait, and it will not wait another year...” [Audio, :59.7]
• Igor Volsky, Wonk Room, 03/03/09: “...In fact, the same PR firm that represented the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth is now represeting this group and we know how good they are at simply manufacturing lies and launching them onto the airwaves...” [Audio, :18]
• Igor Volsky, Wonk Room, 03/03/09: “...Obama’s plan would enhance choice. What it would do would be to set up an exhcange, where patients would have the choice of a private plan or a public model...” [Audio, :10]