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I Still Hate Harry and LouiseThe spoiled brats who killed Hillary-care return.

By Timothy NoahPosted Tuesday, Aug. 19, 2008, at 7:08 PM ET

http://harryandlouisereturn.com/Harry and Louise staged a comeback this morning at Washington's National Press Club. Where the hell were they when we needed them?

Harry Johnson and Louise Caire Clark starred in a famous $14 million TV campaign sponsored by the Health Insurance Association of America in 1993 and 1994 that helped kill off Bill and Hillary Clinton's proposed health care reform bill. The actors played an ordinary-looking married couple poring over medical bills at the kitchen table. "I thought this was covered under our old plan," Louise moaned in the best-known spot. "Having choices we don't like is no choice at all."

"They choose," Harry agreed.

"We lose," replied Louise.

The most infuriating thing about this ad was its failure to recognize that in a democracy, government is not supposed to be a "we-they" proposition. If you feel it's become one, then you have a responsibility to do more than piss and moan in your kitchen. A better example of a "we-they" relationship would be that of the medical patient to his health insurer. Indeed, if you were to air this commercial today minus the voiceover ("The government may force us to pick from a few health care plans designed by government bureaucrats"), it would never occur to TV viewers that Harry and Louise were talking about anyone other than their health insurers.

The new ad, which will air during the conventions, puts Harry and Louise back at the kitchen table, but this time, Harry begins by complaining that rising health care costs have got small companies cutting their plans. (They've got big companies cutting plans, too, but this goes unmentioned.) "You know, Lisa's husband just found out he has cancer," Louise says. Harry looks shocked. "But he's covered, right?"

"No, he just joined a startup, and he can't afford a plan."

Harry shakes his head gravely. "Too many people are falling through the cracks."

"Whoever the next president is, health care should be at the top of his agenda. Bring everyone to the table. Make it happen."

Setting aside Harry's troubling lack of interest in the prognosis for Lisa's husband, I find it hard to forgive these (admittedly fictional) people for showing not the vaguest understanding, much less regret, that they helped bring about the current health care crisis. Nor has the couple any clue about how to fix it. They talked a better game in 2000, when HIAA brought them back to tout InsureUSA, a plan to extend coverage to the uninsured through $30 billion a year in tax credits:

Harry: News on the Web?
Louise: Forty-four million Americans without health insurance.
Harry: That's huge, an epidemic.
Louise: That only coverage can cure.
Harry: We can't leave working families and kids without insurance!

"Uh oh," quipped CNN's William Schneider. "Sounds like Harry and Louise have gone liberal on us." In truth, Harry and Louise (i.e., the health insurers) had never opposed government subsidies, which was what InsureUSA amounted to. What industry in its right mind would refuse a government handout? Rather, Harry and Louise had opposed government regulation. They still did, the ad's conclusion made clear:

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Timothy Noah is a senior writer at Slate.
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