Swift Boaters Gear Up Campaign Against Health Reform

[babylonsister]

Ex-Hospital CEO Battles Reform Effort
Ads Cite Long Waits In Canada and Britain

By Dan Eggen
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, May 11, 2009


The television ads that began airing last week feature horror stories from Canada and the United Kingdom: Patients who allegedly suffered long waits for surgeries, couldn't get the drugs they needed, or had to come to the United States for treatment.

"Before government rushes to overhaul health care, listen to those who already have government-run health care," intones Rick Scott, founder of a group called Conservatives for Patients' Rights. "Tell Congress to listen, too."

Scott, a multimillionaire investor and controversial former hospital chief executive, has become an unlikely and prominent leader of the opposition to health-care reform plans that Congress is expected to take up later this year. While disorganized Republicans and major health-care companies wait for President Obama and Democratic leaders to reveal the details of their plan before criticizing it, Scott is using $5 million of his own money and up to $15 million more from supporters to try to build resistance to any government-run program.

The campaign is being coordinated by CRC Public Relations, the group that masterminded the "Swift boat" attacks against 2004 Democratic presidential candidate John F. Kerry, and is inspired by the "Harry and Louise" ads that helped torpedo health-care reform during the Clinton administration.

"Everybody wants to say I'm against Obama's plan, but I'm not necessarily," Scott said in an interview last week. "The bottom line is that this is happening fast, and there is not much of a debate going on about what will happen if we go down this path."

But in ads, media appearances and other venues, Scott argues that whatever effort Obama is likely to put forth, it will put the country on a slippery slope toward a bureaucratic, British-style national health service.

The effort has alarmed many Democrats and liberal health-care advocates, who are pushing back with attacks highlighting Scott's ouster as head of the Columbia/HCA health-care company amid a fraud investigation in the 1990s. The firm eventually pleaded guilty to charges that it overbilled state and federal health plans, paying a record $1.7 billion in fines.

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http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/05/10/AR2009051002243_pf.html?ref=fp6