Health care debate to flood airwaves

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By Sean Lengell

Who can be against affordable, quality health care? Want easy access to the doctor of your choice? Who doesn't? And who can say no to better innovations in medicine and medical devices?

Get used to these rhetorical queries. As the health care reform debate cranks up in the coming months, advocacy groups will spend millions of advertising dollars waging a public relations war of words to try to sway the American public - as well as Capitol Hill and the White House.

At stake is a multibillion-dollar industry poised for an unprecedented overhaul at the hands of President Obama and his Democratic allies in Congress.

"Clearly, any change in health care policy will impact each of us ... so our plan is to make sure the American public knows what's going on," said Richard L. Scott, chairman of Conservatives for Patients' Rights, which on Tuesday launched its first multimedia ad buy in a yearlong campaign he said may cost him $20 million.

Mr. Scott, who made a fortune running the Columbia Hospital Corp. and who supports free-market principles in health care, said ad campaigns such as his play a pivotal role in helping influence the voting public.

"While Congress will be voting on this, and the president will sign a bill, I believe it's the American public that will decide what the bill is going to have in it," Mr. Scott said.

Democratic leaders in both houses of Congress have said they want to pass separate health care reform packages by summer's end and deliver a final version to the president by his end-of-year deadline.

The health care reform debate took center stage Thursday, as Mr. Obama invited dozens of lawmakers, health care providers, insurers and other stakeholders to a four-hour White House health care summit.

Though there was ample talk of bipartisanship and plenty of praise for the president's initiative in bringing varying groups involved in health care together to discuss the matter, the issue of government-run care was one of the major fault lines exposed during the day's events.

House Minority Leader John A. Boehner, Ohio Republican, who attended the summit, said his party colleagues "have serious concerns about the plan outlined in the president's budget."