Well, the Affordable Care Act is getting pretty close to
being enacted, and a lot of people are panicking about it. It’s driving
premiums up a lot, and I heard even Congress is trying to get exempted from
their own bill. (No surprise there, if true.) And I think it’s possible that
when everything gets rolled out, it’s going to be such a headache, many people
will clamor for a single payer healthcare system. (Some people have cynically
suggested that this plan was designed to fail from the get-go so that we’d have
to scrap it and do a single payer system instead.) Well, if that’s a
possibility, then the government is going to have to convince people about it.
So here are a couple of political ad ideas I have thought up to help sell the
idea of single payer health insurance:
1.) “Born Free”: The song “Born Free” plays as new parents
bring their baby home from the hospital for the first time. The mother shows
the baby around the house as the song plays, and the father picks up the mail,
opens a bill from the hospital, sees how much money they owe for the hospital
stay, and has a panic attack as we hear a loud sound effect of the needle being
scratched off the record of the song that’s playing. Then the mother walks over
to see what he’s looking at and she almost drops the baby from shock, leading
to the baby loudly crying, and the announcer chimes in, saying: “Wouldn’t it be
nice if your baby really was born free?
Support single payer healthcare.”
2.) A man who has had an operation to save his life is
released from the hospital, and he and his family are all smiles exiting the
hospital and arriving home. Then the scene cuts to the inside of the home, and
the man is going through his mail and opening a letter as a family member says:
“Thank goodness they saved you.” And the man looks at the hospital bill and
says: “Saved me? They ruined me!” The family all crowds around to look at the
medical bill and they all get panicked looks on their faces, after which the
announcer chimes in, saying: “Wouldn’t it be nice to get your life saved by
healthcare without having your life ruined with massive medical bills? Support
single payer healthcare.”
