TPM
Greg Sargent
2008/11/25/

Here's yet another encouraging piece of news on the health care front.

I'm told that dozens of the heaviest hitters from the health care reform world met for a private retreat in Virginia last week and spent two days girding for a major battle with the insurance industry, hashing out specific messaging, discussing organizing goals and planning a major fundraising drive to blanket the airwaves with ads next year.

At the retreat -- which was organized by Health Care For America Now, the major umbrella group of unions, reform advocates and providers -- the group agreed that they were aiming to start next year with at least $25 million for ads and field organizing, with the hope of raising many millions more.

Notably, the group, which is operating from the assumption that Barack Obama will act fast on reform, honed a message built around what they called "deficit investment." That's a more public relations-friendly term than "deficit spending," and the slogan is meant to encapsulate the case that health care reform is central to rescuing the economy, a primary talking point of health care reformers.

One other interesting tidbit: Attendees talked about the need to counter some of the conciliatory, disarming talk coming from the insurance industry right now, such as its recent declaration that they would support making insurance available to all applicants, in exchange for a mandate.

"We know the insurance industry is toxic," Jacki Schechner, a spokesperson for the group, told me. "We know they're all about their bottom line. We're seeing them for what we are, and we're getting ready to take them on."

The meeting is significant because it shows that the various interest groups vying for reform are far more clear-eyed about the magnitude of the war ahead -- and are organizing and strategizing far earlier -- than such players did in the run-up to the battle over Hillarycare in the early 1990s.

source

return to top