Harry, Louise Ads Return to Tweak, Fight Health Reform

Harry and Louise, the insurance industry’s hit squad on health reform, returned to the airwaves Monday, raising new alarms over the specter of medical care rationing.

The new, $2-million advertising blitz is aimed at pressuring lawmakers to jettison constraints on medical spending and allow the industry to keep charging older workers and smokers higher premiums.

In one of the Health Insurance Assn. of America’s 30-second spots, the anxious yuppie husband asks his wife: “They’re talking price controls?”

“Rationing, the way I read it,” Louise says. “You know, long waits for health care and some services not even available.”

“Government-controlled health care--Congress can do better than that,” her husband says.

The White House, which accused the industry of spreading falsehoods in the earlier Harry and Louise ads, quickly pounced on the new versions.

“They are back with a vengeance and with the same old scare tactics,” said White House Budget Director Leon E. Panetta.

“What are insurance companies doing today if they are not in fact engaged in rationing” when they reject people with pre-existing conditions, Panetta said.

He charged that the Health Insurance Assn. of America was trying to “stop health care reform at all costs.”

While the insurers rolled out their ads, Health and Human Services Secretary Donna Shalala released new statistics indicating that 17.2% of Americans under age 65 were uninsured in 1992, up from 12.5% in 1980.

And employers spent $1.10 per worker per hour on health insurance in 1993, up from 92 cents an hour in 1991.

Shalala said middle-class families like Harry and Louise are at greater risk of losing their insurance every day.