When an elected official wants a certain phrase or point of view to be transmitted in a news story, a spokesperson often has to do the heavy lifting. Governor Terry Branstad’s communications director Tim Albrecht showed this week how pros get the job done while explaining an apparent contradiction in the governor’s stance on the federal health insurance reform law.
Radio Iowa’s O. Kay Henderson reported Tuesday that the Iowa Department of Public Health will accept a $7 million federal grant to support “insurance market research” and other work related to establishing a state health insurance exchange during the next two years. The 2010 federal health care reform law calls for the federal government to set up such exchanges in any state that has not created its own by January 2014.
Henderson sought comment about why the state is taking this grant, given that the governor joined a lawsuit seeking to invalidate the health care reform law. Albrecht sent this statement on behalf of the governor:
The governor continues to believe that the government takeover of health care is unworkable and unaffordable for states, and the governor continues to believe that the lawsuit will be successful.
Should the government takeover of health care move forward, we need to manage and implement specific solutions for Iowa’s extensive needs, rather than a federally mandated, one-size-fits-all exchange.
We will use this grant to help plan for an Iowa-based exchange. The $7 million federal grant means we will not need to use that portion of the state’s general fund to implement the federal government’s takeover of health care.
At this time, our focus should be on lowering health care costs, which the exchange will fail to do. This is why the governor is focused on making Iowa the healthiest state in the nation.
If the federal government forces states to have any exchange, it should be Iowa-built rather than crafted by a bureaucrat in Washington.
Impressive work: in just seven sentences, Albrecht crammed in “government takeover of health care” three times, plus one “federal government forces states” as well as pejorative references to Washington bureacrats and a “federally mandated, one-size-fits-all exchange.”
No matter how a crafty news editor might slice and dice this statement, any excerpt will leave no doubt that Branstad thinks the health care reform law was a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad thing.
Even though Henderson used only a small part of the statement in the body of her Radio Iowa report, the key Branstad talking point comes through loud and clear: “the government takeover of health care is unworkable and unaffordable for states.”
As a bonus, Albrecht depicted Branstad administration efforts to improve wellness as a superior approach to bringing down health care costs. I’d be more convinced that the governor was serious about the “healthy state” initiative if I could find a single word about school lunch nutrition, physical education or exercise in the governor’s blueprint for education reform (pdf), but that’s a topic for another post. Albrecht did what a spokesperson is supposed to do: try to make the boss look good.
I won’t say Albrecht’s statement is flawless. In fact, “government takeover of health care” was named 2010 “lie of the year” by editors and reporters for the St. Petersburg Times’ fact-checking website PolitiFact. The state-based insurance exchanges Albrecht is talking about here have nothing to do with any “government takeover”:
“Government takeover” conjures a European approach where the government owns the hospitals and the doctors are public employees. But the law Congress passed, parts of which have already gone into effect, relies largely on the free market:
• Employers will continue to provide health insurance to the majority of Americans through private insurance companies.
• Contrary to the claim, more people will get private health coverage. The law sets up “exchanges” where private insurers will compete to provide coverage to people who don’t have it.
• The government will not seize control of hospitals or nationalize doctors.
• The law does not include the public option, a government-run insurance plan that would have competed with private insurers.
• The law gives tax credits to people who have difficulty affording insurance, so they can buy their coverage from private providers on the exchange. But here too, the approach relies on a free market with regulations, not socialized medicine.
The lawsuit Branstad joined argues that the individual mandate to purchase private health insurance is unconstitutional. Yet Branstad himself publicly argued for an individual mandate to buy health insurance a few years ago, when he was president of a Des Moines-based medical school. In this television interview from October 2007, Branstad praised the Massachusetts policy on an individual mandate and drew an analogy to state laws requiring that drivers purchase car insurance.
Side note: during the same television interview, Branstad described Medicare reimbursement disparities affecting Iowa as “crazy.” The federal law he is now trying to invalidate reforms Medicare reimbursement rates to correct that very problem.
To be clear, I have no problem with the Iowa Department of Public Health taking federal money to help cover costs associated with setting up a health insurance exchange. Unlike Branstad, I support federal fiscal aid for state governments facing severe budget constraints. No one would wonder why the state took this $7 million grant if Branstad hadn’t joined the lawsuit against health insurance reform for transparently political reasons.
Albrecht managed this situation effectively. The Radio Iowa report included the governor’s perspective and didn’t challenge the “lie of the year” at its core. Communications job well done.
UPDATE: Tony Leys’ Des Moines Register story on this federal grant likewise incorporated Albrecht’s “government takeover” rhetoric without questioning its factual basis.