Drug Industry Revives ‘Harry & Louise’ Ad Campaign (Update2)

[struggle4progress]

Source: Bloomberg

By Shannon Pettypiece

July 16 (Bloomberg) -- Drugmakers in the U.S. are reviving the “Harry and Louise” characters used to scuttle health legislation sought by the Clinton administration in the 1990s, this time to support an overhaul under President Barack Obama.

The television ads, starting a three-week run over the weekend, will cost about $4 million, said Ron Pollack, executive director of Families USA, a Washington-based group for health- care consumers. Families USA and the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, a trade group based in Washington, are paying for the commercials.

The original ads ran in 1993 and showed a couple sitting at the kitchen table, complaining about a hypothetical government- run health program. The characters have since been revived at least three times, most recently during the 2008 presidential election by nonprofit health-care groups. In the new commercials, an older Harry and Louise, played by the same actors, are at the table opining that people need coverage they can afford and keep if they lose their jobs.

“Every day more and more people find they can’t afford health care,” says Louise, played by Louise Caire Clark. “A little more cooperation, a little less politics and we can get the job done" ...



Read more: http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=axoRno9CpDP0

[brentspeak]

1. "Families USA, a Washington-based group for health- care consumers"

Exactly which health-care "consumers" does this group actually represent? The ones who like being bankrupted by health care bills?

[izquierdista]

2. Yes, do go with it

I think a companion piece, where Louise is looking at Harry's tombstone would be an appropriate reply.

"We should have listened to Hillary. For a while we paid in our premiums, and then when Harry got sick, the insurance company dropped his coverage, said he had a 'pre-existing condition'. Well, it took all our money, we mortgaged the house and he got better for a while. Then when the money was gone, he had a relapse....and then he was gone. :cry: Now I'm trying to make ends meet. I had to file bankruptcy. If I can just make it a couple more years, I can get my Social Security benefits. And Medicare. I have to sign up for Medicare. I just wish we had been eligible for Medicare back then....."

[stlsaxman]

3. Or better still Harry and Louise dumpster diving after she gets cervical cancer...

and they have to declare bankruptcy and foreclose due to debt on her chemo.

[SemperEadem]

8. there ya go

and are reduced to eating cat food out of the tin.

[Downwinder]

5. Didn't Louise get breast cancer?

[stlsaxman]

4. "“A little more cooperation, a little less politics..."??? FAIL.

EPIC FAIL.

[Old Codger]

6. If they like it

It has to bad for us....

[SemperEadem]

7. hopefully, the Obama admin has a series of ads with a couple

that shoots holes in the scare and lie tactics used by the drug pushers, I mean big pharma.

[Turbineguy]

9. "During the Clinton

Administration we introduced you to Harry and Louise. And you believed them. And we fucked you. Now we're back to try it again."

[iverglas]

10. a story about the creator of Harry and Louise from the day

http://www.nytimes.com/1994/09/30/us/harry-and-louise-and-a-guy-named-ben.html

That makes the Malibu office of the agency that created Harry and Louise all the more incongruous. In the oceanfront aerie of Goddard-Claussen/First Tuesday, a campaign portrait of Robert F. Kennedy dominates the hallway, and the walls reflect past clients of a decidedly liberal bent, including the Rev. Jesse Jackson, former Senator Gary Hart and President Boris N. Yeltsin of Russia.

"That doesn't mean I agree with every idea that every Democrat ever proposed," said Ben Goddard, just a trace defensively. "I think the President made a miscalculation on what the American people wanted and tried to do something that was too much too soon."

and an update. ;)

http://www.kansascity.com/637/story/1309622-p2.html

YouTube boasts at least four videos from a group calling itself Healthy Americans Against Reforming Medicine, or HAARM, a creation of the Service Employees International Union that promotes Obama-style reform.

In one of its videos, pitch people for corporate interests huddle around a table to brainstorm.

“OK, how do we make Americans not want to be healthy?” the boss asks. “What’s scarier than death?”

A colleague raises her hand: “Socialism?”

“YES!! Let’s call it socialism!”