It Only Took A Week For Insurance Lobby To Backstab Obama

Last week, President Obama met with business leaders to discuss cutting healthcare costs. Two days earlier, he hosted a meeting with healthcare insurance providers who voluntarily offered $2 trillion in savings over the next 10 years just by honing their efficiency standards.

Well, it only took a week for the insurance lobby to don their Roman togas and play Brutus and Julius Caesar. Et tu, Blue Cross?

Think Progress:

...In less than five days, the insurers not only broke that promise, but the Washington Post reports that Blue Cross Blue Shield of North Carolina has drafted ads aimed at smearing the President’s proposed public health insurance plan.

The Post obtained a copy of the story boards for the ads attacking the public plan. The description for one ad depicts a woman trapped in a hallway of locked doors:

[The mother's hand tries another door, as her child begins to get visibly anxious and restless. Still no luck. In rapid-fire succession, we see their hands trying a series of doorknobs. The pair is seen making their way to the next door, as the tension builds. It seems as if their search may be fruitless.]

While “innocent-sounding piano music, vaguely reminiscent of a nursery rhyme” plays in the background of this increasingly dramatic scene, the narrator intones:

“We can do a lot better than a government-run health care system.”

Rather than being an honest partner in the debate on health reform, the health insurance industry appears to be launching a campaign of misinformation aimed at sinking any serious prospect for change. The leader of the trade group representing the health insurance lobby, Karen Ignagni, made headlines earlier this year when she promised to the President, “you have our commitment, to play, to contribute and to pass health care reform this year.” Curiously, the date on the ad storyboard is May 9th, meaning that at least one major health insurance company has been secretly planning to assault health reform for several weeks.