honoluluadvertiser.com

Sponsored by:

Comment, blog & share photos

Log in | Become a member
The Honolulu Advertiser
Posted on: Sunday, August 23, 2009

Critics aim TV ad at vacationing Obama


    By Ben Pershing
    Washington Post

     • Obama, Kennedy share close relationship

    Seeking to ensure that President Obama has a less than restful vacation, a group opposed to the White House's health care proposals is launching an ad campaign this week that will run locally during his stay at Martha's Vineyard in Massachusetts.

    Conservatives for Patients' Rights says it plans to run a TV spot titled "Surf's Up" in the Martha's Vineyard and Boston areas that implores the president to drop his pursuit of a public health insurance option.

    "The beach is nice this time of year," the ad's narrator begins. "But while President Obama vacations, concerns mount about his health care plan. Why? Because his public-option health plan could lead to government-run health care, higher taxes on everything from paychecks to soda, and add a trillion to the deficit. Mr. President, when you go back to D.C., drop your government-run public-option plan. Let's get on with real reform to lower costs and protect patients' rights."

    The group said it has laid out "more than $150,000" for the ad campaign, a relatively small amount given the more than $60 million spent on health care ads this year, according to the Campaign Media Analysis Group. But CPR hopes to make its dollars count by putting the ad on the air in front of Obama, his staff and the traveling White House press corps.

    Asked at Friday's briefing about the ad, White House spokesman Robert Gibbs made reference to CPR chairman Rick Scott's past legal problems. "Well, I think ... this is the same individual that we've talked about in here who's the recipient of — just so we do this so everybody understands — the largest health care penalty ever issued by a federal government for fraud for a company he was the CEO of, right?" Gibbs said.

    Scott was pushed out from his post atop the Columbia/ HCA health care company during a fraud investigation in the 1990s. The firm paid a record $1.7 billion in fines after pleading guilty to overbilling state and federal health plans.