Andy Harris Health Care Complaint Target of New Liberal Campaign

http://www.andyharris.com

Rep.-elect Andy Harris is the target of a new radio and Facebook campaign aimed at portraying the incoming Republican and his colleagues as hypocrites on the subject of health care.

Harris caught the attention of Capitol Hill last week when he complained that he would not receive his government-provided health care fast enough. The conservative Maryland doctor was one of many Republicans this year who campaigned against President Obama's health care reforms, so Democrats seized on his complaint and sought to portray Harris and others as hypocrites.

Now the liberal advocacy group Americans United for Change is pressing that message with a new campaign directed at Harris' constituents.

The group today launched a radio ad that will air this week in Maryland markets. "Call Congressman Harris and tell him to stop whining about his healthcare and start fighting for ours," a woman says in the ad. "If he wants to deny Maryland families quality, affordable healthcare, tell him to start with his own."

The campaign also includes a Facebook ad targeting residents of Maryland's first district that directs visitors to a website with the heading "America Got Scammed." It urges visitors to sign a petition to "tell the Republicans they have no more right to health care than we do. Tell them to drop the coverage they get through the government or stop this cynical, politically motivated attempt to take it away from the American people."

Last week, Harris' spokesperson Anna Nix told Politico Harris was complaining to point out the inefficiency of government-run health care. Nix said Harris said that "This is the only employer I've ever worked for where you don't get coverage the first day you are employed."

In fact, 74 percent of workers with employer-sponsored health benefits are subject to a waiting period before getting coverage, including 31 percent of whom face a waiting period of 3 months or more, according to a 2010 survey of of employer-sponsored health benefits, conducted by the Kaiser Family Foundation and the Health Research & Educational Trust.

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Stephanie Condon is a political reporter for CBSNews.com. You can read more of her posts here. Follow Hotsheet on Facebook and Twitter.

[dennishausman]

What's Andy Harris to do without health care for the next 3 months? The same as 50 million other Americans. Go without!

[rockcutr]

We do not need Insurance. We need reasonable rates directly from the medical community. Cut out the insurance factor. Then we may have a fighting chance to keep health care costs to an affordable reality.
In contrast to Harris' issue. Welcome to the unreal world of having to survive work boot camp of 90 days were you may be let go for any made up reason. Ususally a personality defect of a boss in conflict with workers. A call to the hatchet division called human resourses and the ax man chops off your.....
fill in your body part of choice. Add to the pain in knowing you also lost your job in this action after peein in a bottle, going thru background screenings, work history checks, a through check of fingernails for dirt, a deep look into ears for excess wax. The list goes on. It is almost as if employers have this thing about posting a job. We want you but we don't want you. If you really want to work for us. Jump thru these hoops and maybe we will allow you to be under paid and over worked for the amount of time chosen by the dart board method.

[ge556]

"We do not need Insurance. We need reasonable rates directly from the medical community."

And what would be a reasonable rate for a heart-lung transplant?

The only way it would be acceptable to go without insurance is to have another kind of health care plan, like an HMO or Medicare. I have the option of a Co-op HMO. My insurance is competitive with it.

TruthTeller

[liberalme]

What a great idea, no insurance ever!

Do you think you'd be able to play "lets make a deal" with the "medical community" for cancer treatments?
How about playing that game with a child with spinal bifida, downs or some other debilitating lifelong illness?

Your comments sound more like having a problem keeping a job than getting insurance.

[hhandyman]

the Doc needs to know what we all know Health insurance isnt as easy as it looks from the Paying end. Hes use to being the recipient of the Insurance dollar Bout time the Conserveative side Learned what it costs to be on the Poor paying side.
Congress needs to be paying the same as Self employed people before they get the Retirement program. move all to the retirement funding to the standard social security at the same rate as the general public.

[Amusedbyitall]

Congress, both Senators and Representatives, are given a base pay of $174,000.00 per year. That is a sufficient salary to find their own health insurance, or maintain the same insurance plan they had before elected, like the rest of us. If you do not believe that the government should be paying for personal health insurance, then turn it down. Where are the Republicans' principles? And don't start comparing Congressional health care with private sector health care. Politicians come to us looking for a job, voluntarily. We don't have to lure them in with bonus packages. They vote themselves health care packages to benefit themselves. Name one private sector health care plan where the employee arbitrarily dictates the terms of the insurance plan.

[liberalme]

WE provide each of them cadillac coverage at the cost of $10,000 EACH (average)---that's over $5,000,000 a year for the lot of them--AND they get to decide what's good for us!

[RobAla]

Congressional health care and the stinky health care bill are not the same. No member of Congress would substitute the coverage of the health care bill for their Congressional coverage. All that talk about giving Americans the same coverage as those in Washington was pure crap. No member of Congress wants to be in the health care bill that they forced on a majority of Americans who do not want it - simply because it is garbage. It causes the majority of Americans to have higher cost in raised premiums. It levies huge Medicaid increases in coverage on states, which they are not prepared to pay for (this is one reason 20 states are suing the federal government over this bill). It burdens suffering businesses even more than they have been, which will prove brutal for continued unemployment. Latest CBO figures indicate that this bill will cost $1 trillion over 10 years. It is absolutely a terrible bill, which was passed by Democrats without hardly any of them even read it prior. That is why Pelosi made the idiotic statement "We have to pass it, so that we can know what is in it." This thing needs to be repealed in such a bad way. The only real thing that it accomplishes is that it expands the federal government at the expense of businesses and American taxpayers. Washington gets the real benefit, and it is sickening.

[jimbom121]

ummm, in the bill, the exchanges were to offer the same choices as government employees. Yes the bill costs $1t over 10 years, but if you that figure, you have to include the CBO estimates for cost savings, which is $130b over 10 years, and $1.2t over the second 10 years.

[Kathy9876]

I believe the Pelosi quote was ACTUALLY,

"But we have to pass the bill so that you can find out what is in it, away from the fog of the controversy. Furthermore, we believe that health care reform, again I said at the beginning of my remarks, that we sent the three pillars that the President's economic stabilization and job creation initiatives were education and innovation-innovation begins in the classroom-clean energy and climate, addressing the climate issues in an innovative way to keep us number one and competitive in the world with the new technology, and the third, first among equals I may say, is health care, health insurance reform. Health insurance reform is about jobs. This legislation alone will create 4 million jobs, about 400,000 jobs very soon."

http://www.speaker.gov/newsroom/pressreleases?id=1576

She was not saying that SHE didn't know what was in it. She was saying that YOU/WE didn't...because YOU/WE had been told about death panels and other assorted bits of nonsense. It was not the best phrasing, it is not the best bill but...

[mcgee28]

People in Congress should receive the same type of reimbursement as someone serving in the armed forces.In fact they should perhaps receive a Stipend to cover their expenses. There should be no Salary, Health care or Pension If you are an American, a Patriot then it is an honor to serve your country by serving in the Government.
Health insurance is a rip off. Forget Health insurance.
We should all Opt out of our insurance. Then we should contact our doctors and negotiate a fee for our office visits etc, Cut out the middle man.
Medications can be purchased on the World Wide Web. why should all of hte other countries citizens receive their medications at lower prices?
What is this?

[ge556]

My son had a $150K hospital bill after being hit by a drunk driver. I'm sure glad we have good health insurance.

It's a VERY bad idea to go without health coverage--insurance, HMO, or other.

TruthTeller

[mcgee28]

People in Congress should receive the same type of reimbursement as someone serving in the armed forces.In fact they should perhaps receive a Stipend to cover their expenses. There should be no Salary, Health care or Pension If you are an American, a Patriot then it is an honor to serve your country by serving in the Government.
Health insurance is a rip off. Forget Health insurance.
We should all Opt out of our insurance. Then we should contact our doctors and negotiate a fee for our office visits etc, Cut out the middle man.
Medications can be purchased on the World Wide Web. why should all of hte other countries citizens receive their medications at lower prices?
What is this?

[mwfcolorado]

Sure Congress screwed up 'reform', but at least something was done that provided some protections for the consumer that eluded previous administrations.

If we are lucky, intelligent minds will get together and do something about the skyrocketing costs of insurance, which is one of the biggest problems with health insurance (though I'm not sure how they can fix the incompetent 'customer service' departments).

Someone needs to address why premiums go up double digits year over year, while the annual rate of inflation has been pretty steady (about 3% annually) the past couple of decades. Should the consumer be forced to pay higher premiums just because a CEO and board decides the CEO needs a 51% raise (Anthem CEO, for example, now making about 13 million a year).

They also need to stop jacking up rates mid-year when the consumer is locked in on an annual basis and can't make any changes until 'enrollment period'.

Anyone with auto insurance knows that if EVERYONE is insured, the cost of insurance generally goes down, especially uninsured motorist coverage.

One last issue - if you are against mandatory health insurance, why aren't you attempting to pass legislation that would make it easier to deny treatment to those that are unable to pay when they show up at the emergency room? Or is that issue just not getting any attention?

[skepticalJM]

All citizens should have adequate Health Care that doesn't bankrupt them, or leave them and their families at the mercy of the parasitical profiteers who have made Health Care unaffordable. Too many parasites are getting rich off Health Care, just as the Oil Barons are robbing us at the gas pump. The welfare junkies are not the only parasites in this country; the Republicans better wise up, or they will find themselves in deep Sh-t, the people are on to them.

[carolo43]

After crying all over Maryland about this awful "socialsit" healthcare, he couldn't wait to jump in and even cried about the 28 day grace period. Preventing others from getting healthcare makes about as much sense as not voting for unemployment, wanting to do away with the mininium wage, screwing around with social security and medicare but THEN voting for the richest in the nation to get tax cuts. Goes to show the top 10% of the people is who the republicans are interested in pleasing.