In a recent article from The Washington Post, they touch upon the recent heath care debate and all the advertising that has come along with it. The article says, "all sides of the debate are pouring tens of millions of dollars into television ads". The article gives examples of what are the eight most prominent ads in recent time.
One of the first ads shown is a bipartisan ad that cost 3.5 million dollars and was shown in 10 states. The ad is from the point of view of Montana senator Max Baucus and he talks about a heath care reform that will not raise the premiums of seniors who already have drug coverage. Some democrats would argue that he deserves no praise for this ad, but The Washington Post article points out that nothing said by Baucus is a misstatement.
The next ad featured does not support the Democratic or Republican party, but does however support the new heath care policy. It first aired on August 12th and was shown in all 50 states for a total cost of around 12 million. The commercial is trying to tell all Americans that they should support the new heath care policy. Some of the reasons are, no one can be denied for a pre-existing condition, dropped if you get sick, and they claim that it will provide more quality care. This ad is very general and does not touch upon any of the controversial topics.
In Woos article about Medicare, he provides a lot of useful information about a very serious issue in the heath care debate. Issues like keeping the cost of Medicare constant and how some states have higher cost than others. This is information that not all people are educated about, and maybe these type of ads can help relay the message to the average person.
All the ads and the full artice can be seen at: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/special/health/adwatch/?hpid=topnews
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After viewing some of the ads in the article I feel like its election time again. One party degrading the other party and vice versa. I feel that it is fine to listen to these ads, but we shouldn't make major decisions about the health care reform based off these 30 second commercials. We are going to have to do our own research to get detailed information. These commercials either wanting support for the health care reform or people to go against it are giving limited information. For instance, the Baucus ad that discusses his proposed heatlth care deal sounds great because it is a bipartisan bill that will make sure premiums won't go up for seniors and no one with pre-existing conditions will be denied coverage. However, he is only sharing parts of his proposed deal. I found that there is more to his proposed bill. He wants insurance coverage to be mandatory. That means people will be fined up to $3,800 (depending on income) if they don't have insurance. This is a huge issue people need to know about. More information about Baucus' health care deal is at: http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2009/09/08/baucus-plan-allows-fines-failing-health-insurance/?loomia_ow=t0:s0:a16:g2:r3:c0.139983:b27617230:z0
ReplyDeleteI couldn't agree with Dina more, watching these ads brought me back to election time, where all I wanted to do was turn off the TV and avoid the bombardment of the political commercials. This article was very interesting to me, because it perfectly illustrates what we discussed last week in class: political sound bites. These ads are great in the sense where they are produced in a way where the "common Joe" can make sense out of it. They grab the audiences attention and use actors and actresses the audience members can personally relate to. But the catch is, these are merely glimpses into the eral issue at hand. These commercials (the supports of the public option) create a utopia of what life would be like with the public option and the ones against the people option can spin it in the complete opposite direction. Yes, these commercials can persuade the viewers and make them feel as if they should share the same beliefs, but they have left out the substance. These ads do not provide all the information, they are just 30-seconds of political fluff. Our nation is falling into the trap of politicians and advertisers by allowing political sound bites to guide our future.
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