Tuesday, August 20, 2013

Republicans writing the Fall 2014 campaign commercials for Democrats

Prelude here:  a Republican operative with a pre-existing condition and no insurance rethinks the Obamacare thing.

POTENTIAL SCRIPT EXAMPLE:

"We're the Jones Family, living right here with you in Houston, and we've been conservative Republicans for as long as we can remember. When Republican leaders told us not to sign up for health insurance on the Obamacare exchanges, we believed them. After signup eligibility closed, Suzie here got hit by a car [PHOTO MONTAGE OF MEDICAL TREATMENT]. We're incredibly relieved that Suzie is recovering, but the bills have ruined us because our Republican leaders told us not to get insurance."

"We can't wait until the eligibility for Obamacare insurance signup starts again, and we'll be signing up."

"We're still conservatives, but something has gone deeply wrong with the Republican Party leadership. We're protecting our family this fall by voting for [DEMOCRATIC CANDIDATE] who will help us get and keep affordable health care. You should do the same."

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I don't think the effort to get people to not sign up will be very successful, but it should be successful enough to have plenty of Real People examples, like the hypothetical one above, in contested campaigns throughout the country.

While not all Republicans/conservatives have called for a boycott, a lot have and the rest have done everything they could to sabotage health care. I think this commercial would be a fair shot against your typical Tea Party Congressman unless he or she made an exception and told people to sign up on the exchanges.

10 comments:

Anonymous said...

There are not any "Republican Leaders" in your link. I hardly think FreedomWorks and a Radio Host qualify.

The counter commercial will be about waivers and delays for everyone except the middle class or simply "you".


I hope the Democrats listen to you Brian it would be a disaster to run on Obamacare.




Still trying to build your political future via RR. Remember politicians get nailed with guilt by association more than anyone and there has been some real negative going ons 'round here.




1

Anonymous said...

Looks like Brian has been busy in Minnesota.

http://minnesota.cbslocal.com/2013/08/19/not-everyone-loving-mnsures-paul-bunyan-themed-ad-campaign/

Laughing at Brian as always.

1

Anonymous said...

"While not all Republicans/conservatives have called for a boycott, a lot have and the rest have done everything they could to sabotage health care. "

Such all-encompassing claims are rarely (if ever) true, but we actually know that this particular one is false because one of the nation's most prominent and powerful Conservatives, Chief Supreme Court Justice Roberts, has clearly not done everything he could to sabotage Obama's health care plan.

John said...

The US needs healthcare reform, but Obamacare has real problems. We need single-payer. See the article by Woodhandler, Day, and Himmelstein, "State Health Reform Flatlines", from 2008. The authors show that Obamacare (individual mandates) has already been tried and failed in a number of states. For lots of reasons, but the main one being that young, healthy people without a lot of money can't afford to pay the insurance premium, so they just pay the fine, which is cheaper.

The full citations are:
Himmelstein, D.U. & Woolhandler, S. (2010). “Obama’s Reform: Not Cure for What Ails Us.” Brit Med J, 340, c1778.

Angell, M. (2008). “Health Reform You Shouldn’t Believe In.” The American Prospect, April 21.

Woolhandler, S., Day, B., & Himmelstein, D.U. (2008). “State Health Reform Flatlines.” Int J Health Serv, 38, 585-592.
which can be found here.
Note tht Marcia Angell is the former editor of the New England Journal of Medicine.

The Republicans have done nothing to distinguish themselves, but Obamacare has real problems, ignored by Democrats.

Anonymous said...

Completely off-topic, but for those closer to Eli's time zone today is a traditional "Blue moon".

It's worth going outside around 6:00pm to see the rising full moon - when the next one rises in 2016 the world will likely have seen some extraordinary new records further portending serious global warming.


Bernard J.

Anonymous said...

Many democrats ignore the problems with Obamacare and won't even bring themselves to say the words "single payer" because they simply can't/won't criticize their leader (and don't expect to hear any criticism from Brian or Eli in that regard)

As those of us who were actually paying attention know, Obama (or more precisely his proxy, Max Baucus) took single payer off the table before consideration of health care had even started.




Rattus Norvegicus said...

Anon,

I was paying attention. However I also realized that passing single payer was just not possible. Heck it wasn't even possible to get a public option passed. While I regret this state of affairs, something is better than nothing. I'm not sure it will work, but it is what we've got. Perhaps if it doesn't work, single payer will get more support behind it.

Anonymous said...

"Obama (or more precisely his proxy, Max Baucus) took single payer off the table before consideration of health care had even started."

"passing single payer was just not possible"

First, the above are not the same.

Second, only one of the above actually follows necessarily from the other.

I'll leave that as an exercise for the reader.

Rattus Norvegicus said...

Anonymous, why waste your time on something that is clearly not achievable. During the 2008 campaign, IIRC, Obama said that if we would be able to start over he would support single payer. But really, it just wasn't going to happen. Hell, IIRC, at one point a proposal was on the board (what was basically Lieberman's proposal from a few years back) to allow people between 55 and 65 to buy into Medicare. Lieberman opposed this proposal.

The debate on the who PPACA from it's opponents was fundamentally dishonest. How you can expect an honest discussion in the current atmosphere (or that existing in 2009 and 2010) is beyond me. There was no point in putting single payer, no matter how much I would have liked to see it (and it is my preferred alternative) it just wasn't going to happen. It is like being pissed off at the phone company -- you spend a lot of emotional energy and nothing is ever going to happen.

Brian said...

Vermont is pursuing single payer right now, which is allowed under ACA. If it works out, then we can expect it to spread to non-crazy states.

And FWIW, I've criticized the Obama Administration a number of times, most recently on the NSA issue, before that on Syria, Plan B, and often over climate issues.