Harry and Louise are back!

Chuck Sheketoff

Remember Harry and Louise? They were the characters in the infamous 1993 TV ad that helped derail health care reform for the past 15 years.

Now Harry and Louise are back — and they're singing a very different tune. Watch the new ad, and see what Harry and Louise are saying 15 years later:

Also view The Making of Harry and Louise Return.

They came back as part of Families USA's Stand Up for Health Care effort.

Discuss.

  • Harry (unverified)
    (Show?)

    Even though he looks just like me, I am not the Harry in the video.

    Nor am I the other Harry, Mr. Demented.

    I am just Harry, from [email protected].

    And doesn't Louise look rather fetching? She hot!

  • (Show?)

    Interesting, Chuck.

    Do you agree with the "bring everyone to the table" approach? As I recall, Hillary Clinton tries to do that in the early '90s, with the result that she was criticized from the left for giving too much in her plan to the insurance companies, even as they were sabotaging her with the original "Harry and Louise."

    That was/is also the premise behind John Kitzhaber's Archimedes Movement/We Can Do Better, which if it is going anywhere is doing so incredibly slowly.

    Perhaps more to the point, it was also the premise behind HB 329, which from what has come out so far seems to have completely fizzled.

    Not all stakeholders are created equal. The problem has been that the process has not been defined by the idea of putting health care first, and frankly if Health Care First is saying "bring everyone to the table" without specifying that the insurance companies' profits and the private hospitals' profits have to be lower priorities than some others, I don't think they will be living up to their name.

    I think we need to get behind California Nurses' Association/NNOC, Physicians for a National Health System, Healthcare-NOW and build up the organized constituency for a full, equal, publicly provided health system. I don't trust Andy Stern personally and I don't think he has the right strategy. "Bringing everyone to the table" when certain interests are well-organized, rich, and have lots of politicians in their pockets if not actually part of them (Bill Frist) and others are poorly organized, poorly funded and have been regularly shut out by elected officials and the media is not a recipe for success, IMO.

  • Byard Pidgeon (unverified)
    (Show?)

    I watched the Families USA presentation of Harry and Louise, on CSPAN. It appeared to me that the consortium they've put together is comprised of medical providers associations and insurance companies, all scared sick that the dreaded single payer system will prevail. One reporter, from ABC, asked the main insurance association spokesperson if they were reserving the right to make Harry and Louise go negative, if the group didn't like the solutions proposed by a new administration...she did not answer.

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