British women conned into appearing in anti-health reform ads

Two British women who appeared in anti-health reform ads in the United States say they were duped into thinking they were participating in a documentary about health care, the UK’s Daily Mail reports.

"Furious Kate Spall and Katie Brickell claim that their views on the NHS have been misrepresented by a free market campaign group opposed to Mr Obama’s reforms in a bid to discredit the UK system," the newspaper states.

The "free market campaign group" in question is Conservatives for Patients' Rights, which is headed up by Rick Scott, the former head of private health provider Columbia/HCA. Scott was forced out of his position after revelations of billing fraud at the company.

More at Raw Story

Who's behind the attacks on a health care overhaul?

Reporters from McClatchy Newspapers reveal that much of the money and strategy behind the so-called grassroots groups organizing opposition to the Democrats' health care plans comes from conservative political consultants, professional organizers and millionaires, some of whom hold financial stakes in the outcome. Read it all here.

Canadian health care hardly a Marxism threat

Seems that Canadians are finally getting a bit pissed over Republicans continually bashing their health care system. Rightly so and I am glad that they are starting to speak out. The Calgary Herald takes a swat at the misinformation and Rick Scott in particular.

The latest poster girl for the socialism-scaredy cat crowd is Shona Holmes, who re-mortgaged her Waterdown, Ont. home so she could spend $100,000 to get a growth near her pituitary gland treated at the Mayo Clinic. Holmes stars in an ad sponsored by Patients United Now, and she claims Canadian doctors told her a referral to a specialist would take several months. Holmes's pitch is ironically quite a nice plug for Canadian health care, because nobody up here has to remortgage their home or scrounge up $100,000 to pay for their health care. You almost feel like saying, "the defence rests" after that. Holmes also admits health care is "wonderful" in Ontario. Further, the Canadian health-care system prioritizes cases and people whose situations are dire do get in faster; such triaging is done every day with heart bypass surgery and MRIs. Since no one is privy to Holmes's health records, it's impossible to know how urgent her condition was.

The attacks on Canada's health-care system by Americans gleefully pouncing on the things that are wrong, ignore the far greater number of things that are right.

The trouble with America's system is that the horror stories are not the "extreme exceptions." When 50 per cent of Americans who declare bankruptcy do so because they can't pay their medical bills, those are not a few extreme cases.

Both countries need to fix what's wrong in their own systems by looking at best practices elsewhere, with an eye to enhancing universal access, not compromising it.

Read it all here

Bill Moyers: How Can We Expect an Industry That Profits from Disease and Sickness to Police Itself?

"The health care industry has spent $134 million on lobbying this year to keep its profits high and public health in the shadows."

So the banks were too big to fail and now, apparently, health care is too big to fix, at least the way a majority of people indicate they would like it to be fixed, with a single payer option. President Obama favors a public health plan competing with the medical cartel that he hopes will create a real market that would bring down costs. But single payer has vanished from his radar.

Nor is single payer getting much coverage in the mainstream media. Barely a mention was given to the hundreds of doctors, nurses and other health care professionals who came to Washington last week to protest the absence of official debate over single payer.

Wheelers and dealers from the health sector aren’t waiting for that moment. According to the non-partisan Center for Responsive Politics, they’ve spent more than $134 million on lobbying in the first quarter of 2009 alone. And some already are shelling out big bucks for a publicity blitz and ads attacking any health care reform that threatens to reduce the profits from sickness and disease.

The Washington Post’s health care reform blog reported Tuesday that Blue Cross Blue Shield of North Carolina has hired an outside PR firm to put together a video campaign assaulting Obama’s public plan. And this month alone, the group Conservatives for Patients’ Rights is spending more than a million dollars for attack ads. They’ve hired a public relations firm called CRC – Creative Response Concepts. You remember them – the same high-minded folks who brought you the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, the gang who savaged John Kerry’s service record in Vietnam.

Read More at AlterNet:

Healthcare Enemy No. 1

About Rick Scott - the millionaire Republican heading up Conservatives for Patients' Rights (CPR), a new group that plans to pend around $20 million to kill President Obama's efforts at healthcare reform. Scott "made his fortune (which, yes, he still has) in no small part thanks to steady contract fees from the Great Society's entitlement programs."

Talking Points Memo | Campaign Against Obama Health Plan Run By Notorious Conservative PR Firm

By Elana Schor - March 3, 2009, 5:55PM

A new group called Conservatives for Patients Rights (CPR) is about to launch the opening salvo in the fight to sink President Obama's health care plan.

CPR is running TV, radio, and web ads that attempt to stoke irrational fears of 'a central national board' in charge of medical decision-making, asking Americans to envision a world where 'bureaucrats decide the treatments you receive, the drugs you take, even the doctors you see.' Of course, that vision has nothing to do with the president's health care plan, but the truth shouldn't be an impediment to CPR's dream of killing health care reform.

After all, the group has hired Creative Response Concepts, the same PR firm that represented the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth during the 2004 presidential race. The "media relations" contact number listed on CPR's website, (703) 683-5004, is the same phone number as Creative Response Concepts, as one liberal organization discovered when researching the new health care group.

Creative Response's past clients also include the Christian Coalition, the right-leaning National Taxpayers Union, and USANext, the front group that led George W. Bush's failed push to privatize Social Security. Hilariously, Politico could only bring itself to observe that CPR has hired "veteran Republican consultants" for its new anti-Obama effort.

Another good article about this at Daily Kos

More background reading.