Hassle-Free Health Coverage: The Standard of Political Impact

HHS's Office of Inspector General releases an annual audit of Medicare payments each March. During the late 1990s, these reports triggered a regular pattern of response that people who deal with health care issues agree sums up the political farce.

The pattern goes something like this:

- Congress expresses shock and outrage at the volume of improper billings and reimbursements...and then moves on to the next outrage.

- Health care industry spokesmen attack the report's methodology and worry loudly that opportunistic politicians will blame doctors for gouging patients.

- Medicare's bureaucrats announce new efforts to discourage improper billing and prosecute outright fraud and abuse.

- A few high-profile arrests take place, while doctors and hospital groups look on anxiously.

- Business goes on as usual.

But not everything that Washington does about health care is a joke. Anyone who still had doubts about the effectiveness of grass-roots political lobbying was probably convinced by the HIAA's famous "Harry and Louise" television ads. These appeared in 1994 to lobby against the Clinton administration's massive health care reform plan.

In contrast to complex charts and graphs that the administration used to illustrate its plan, the insurance industry ran a series of ads that featured a middle-class couple fretting over the prospect of a government-run system.

The $15 million ad campaign -- one of the most expensive in American political history -- was credited with eroding public support for Clinton's health care plan. The plan died without a even vote.

Since Harry and Louise, corporations and other groups have been putting together ever more elaborate grass-roots campaigns, and they now often start them long before a congressional vote is scheduled.