On the heels of a pledge of cooperation between providers and the government on reducing health care costs comes a much less friendly indication that health care reform will be a down-and-dirty fight.
This week, the Washington Post got ahold of storyboards for three commercials being planned by Blue Cross Blue Shield of North Carolina. As the Post article notes, “The insurer paints a picture of a future system in which patients wait months for appointments and can’t choose their own doctors.â€
BCBS/NC appears to be taking direct aim at a key provision in the health care reform plan that would allow individuals to purchase a public plan.
Quite naturally, private insurers are not keen on a low-cost public plan and are trying to portray it in the least flattering light. What is galling about the BCBS effort is that the company has done quite well for itself since it started running the health care plan for state employees. That plan — overpriced, deep in the hole and driving out healthy young subscribers at an astonishing rate — has proven to be a burden to taxpayers and the people it’s designed to cover. And thanks to powerful lobbying and a lot of campaign contributions, the deal between BCBS and the taxpayers is not only lucrative but treated as something of a state secret.
Now some of BCBS’s hard-earned cash is being put to use to knock down one of the truly affordable aspects of health care reform.
This is just a taste of what’s to come. Drug companies, HMOs and health insurers are going to fight this reform hard. BCBS has already shown their cards by hiring Raleigh-based Capstrat to put together the commercials highlighted by the Post.
They will try to frighten us, of course, by leading us to believe that a system that is already a mess and has left tens of millions of people without insurance could be even worse.
The really frightening thing is that by bombarding the airwaves with slick ads and dolling out the campaign cash they might once again win.