Obama Planning Offensive Against Insurance Industry
WASHINGTON — With Republicans mobilizing against the proposed health care overhaul, President Obama, Congressional Democrats and leading advocacy groups are laying the groundwork for an August offensive against the insurance industry as part of a coordinated campaign to sell the public on the need for reform.
The effort will feature town-hall-style meetings by lawmakers and the president, including a swing through Western states by Mr. Obama, grass-roots lobbying efforts and a blitz of expensive television advertising. It is intended to drive home the message that revamping the health care system will protect consumers by ending unpopular insurance industry practices, like refusing patients with pre-existing conditions.
“I think what we want to communicate is that this is going to give people who have insurance a degree of security and stability, the protection that they don’t have today against the sort of mercurial judgments of insurance bureaucrats,” said David Axelrod, a senior adviser to Mr. Obama, adding, “Our job is to help folks understand how this will help them.”
Revamping health care is the president’s top legislative priority, and people on all sides of the debate agree that August, when lawmakers leave Washington to take the pulse of constituents, will be crucial to shaping public opinion. With Republicans making headway by casting the legislation as a costly government takeover, Democrats have decided they must answer the question on the minds of those now insured: “What’s in it for me?”
That has led to a campaign of increasingly harsh rhetoric against the insurance industry, which says it favors an overhaul but is working to defeat Mr. Obama’s call for a government-run insurance plan to compete against the private sector. On Friday, Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Democrat of California, promised a “drumbeat across America” to counter what she termed a “shock and awe, carpet-bombing by the health insurance industry to perpetuate the status quo.”
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The effort will feature town-hall-style meetings by lawmakers and the president, including a swing through Western states by Mr. Obama, grass-roots lobbying efforts and a blitz of expensive television advertising. It is intended to drive home the message that revamping the health care system will protect consumers by ending unpopular insurance industry practices, like refusing patients with pre-existing conditions.
“I think what we want to communicate is that this is going to give people who have insurance a degree of security and stability, the protection that they don’t have today against the sort of mercurial judgments of insurance bureaucrats,” said David Axelrod, a senior adviser to Mr. Obama, adding, “Our job is to help folks understand how this will help them.”
Revamping health care is the president’s top legislative priority, and people on all sides of the debate agree that August, when lawmakers leave Washington to take the pulse of constituents, will be crucial to shaping public opinion. With Republicans making headway by casting the legislation as a costly government takeover, Democrats have decided they must answer the question on the minds of those now insured: “What’s in it for me?”
That has led to a campaign of increasingly harsh rhetoric against the insurance industry, which says it favors an overhaul but is working to defeat Mr. Obama’s call for a government-run insurance plan to compete against the private sector. On Friday, Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Democrat of California, promised a “drumbeat across America” to counter what she termed a “shock and awe, carpet-bombing by the health insurance industry to perpetuate the status quo.”
LinkHere
posted by Kangaroo Brisbane Australia at 4:03 AM
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