TV Battle Over Health Care Is One-Sided : Lobbying: An insurers’ group has spent $10.5 million to air spots attacking Clinton’s plan, versus about $250,000 by Democrats, Republicans.

The battle over health care reform--being waged on television between ads for Tums and Englebert Humperdinck compact disks--highlights perhaps the most important domestic policy question in two generations. So far the battle has been one-sided.

The Republican Party has spent just $100,000 on one ad, the Democrats $150,000 for two others.

Dominating the TV ad wars is a little-known trade association representing small and medium-sized insurance companies. Virtually unopposed, the Health Insurance Assn. of America has spent a staggering $10.5 million since April to air six ads attacking President Clinton’s plan. The most prominent stars characters Harry and Louise, who sit at their kitchen table shaking their heads over the President’s health care plan.

The ads, containing some inaccuracies, mark a change in the art of lobbying lawmakers--which usually is done face to face. Only rarely have interest groups lobbied on television: on the 1982 and 1986 tax reform plans and more recently on the North American Free Trade Agreement.

And never before has an industry spent so much to use television as a lobbying tool--in this case even before the legislation was drafted. The objective, experts say, is not so much to persuade the public as to influence the media and public opinion leaders--and particularly members of Congress.

“I think they are trying to affect the elite media into believing they are a serious voice with a constituency,” said Kathleen Hall Jamieson, dean of the Annenberg School of Communications at the University of Pennsylvania. “They aren’t trying to persuade the public at large.”

The strategy appears to be working. This week the Clinton Administration retaliated, using Hillary Rodham Clinton not to challenge the ads’ message so much but to attack the “gall” of insurance companies for criticizing the President’s plan.

Some experts in Washington see HIAA’s use of television lobbying as a harbinger.

“The reason everything gets so negative in our politics is you can say anything negative in 30 seconds, but try to say something positive,” said Douglas Bailey, a former pioneering political consultant and now publisher of the Hotline newsletter on politics.

“There are an awful lot of organizations that have an awful lot of money, and they are going to flood the place with ads and it is going to be awful. This is a terrible way to run a democracy.”

HIAA hardly represents the insurance industry as a whole. The group’s members control 35% of the health insurance market.

If Clinton’s plan becomes law, many HIAA members are expected to go out of business because they are too small to be able to lower their costs far enough to meet government-imposed standards.

But four of the country’s largest insurance companies--Aetna, Cigna, Travelers and Metropolitan--recently dropped out of the group because they preferred not to participate in such aggressive opposition to the Clinton plan. Blue Cross-Blue Shield is also not a member.

HIAA President Willis D. Gradison Jr., a former Ohio congressman, contends that his group supports Clinton’s basic principles, differing only on these points:

It opposes government-set ceilings for premium increases and a requirement that insurers meet certain qualifications to participate in government-sponsored alliances. And it wants criteria other than family size and geographic location to determine how much Americans should pay for health insurance.

HIAA’s ad campaign, being directed by the Malibu consulting firm of Goddard-Clauson First Tuesday, began in April with two commercials. The first featured actor Monte Markham introducing interviews with Americans about what they want from health care. In September, it began introducing the first of four Harry and Louise ads. (One ran for only two days before being pulled because of inaccuracies.)

The ads have run on CNN and Headline News in huge numbers and on local stations in New York, Washington and Los Angeles--the classic markets for reaching opinion leaders. Its newest ad, introduced this week, also will run in 10 other cities that are home to key members of Congress.

“Our ads raise good questions,” Gradison told reporters this week. “And they ask the public to approach health care reform with open eyes and a healthy degree of skepticism.”

Administration officials and political advisers contend that HIAA’s motives are self-serving. HIAA is attempting to undermine the Clinton plan, they say, hoping to force the White House to compromise.

“These ads are scare tactics, a smoke screen, so their agenda won’t be discussed,” argued Mandy Grunwald, a political consultant who works closely with the Clinton Administration. “They want to protect their profits, and they make their money by finding and insuring the well and excluding the sick and that is not a defensible position.”

Grunwald also scoffed at the notion that HIAA supports ideas similar to Clinton’s. “What they disagree with are the fundamental premises of the plan,” she said.

But Grunwald said Administration officials acknowledge that the ad campaign is having an impact. “When you look at the questions the press now asks about the plan, some of them come out of the ads.”

In general, the ads do not espouse a new plan. They simply raise vague doubts about Clinton’s--and occasionally imply dire consequences not fully backed by facts.

Its newest ad, for example, cites a provision in the Clinton plan that would put a ceiling on insurance premium increases and vaguely suggests that as a consequence, the plan could run out of money--an implication generally viewed as improbable.

“The ads aren’t really about anything at all,” said Bailey, the former Republican political consultant.

HIAA spokesman Richard Coorsh countered that the Administration is diverting attention to details of the plan by trying to discredit insurance companies as evil.

The Democratic National Committee, which created its own lobbying group, the National Health Care Campaign, has spent about $150,000 to air two commercials briefly on CNN. One promoted the President’s health care reform speech to Congress and attacked the first HIAA ad. The second highlighted the principles of Clinton’s plan.

Families USA, another group supporting the Administration, produced a radio ad and purchased $50,000 worth of air time. But the ad was never broadcast. By the time it was ready, the HIAA ad to which it was responding had been taken off the air.

The Republicans also have barely played the advertising game. The party spent “slightly less” than $100,000 to buy time on CNN and in Washington on some local network affiliate. The ad both criticizes the Clinton plan and implies that the Republicans have an alternative. The ad contains several inaccuracies and leaves the misimpression that there is a single Republican approach. Actually, Republicans are backing several plans that vary widely.

With its small buy on CNN and in Washington, this ad, too, was an attempt mostly to influence the influential and the media.