Under Pressure

By Kevin Friedl
The National Journal
March 3, 2008

Group Attacks House Democrats On Wiretapping Bill; Plus: Health Care In Ohio

Remember Health Care?

With free trade, the economy and Iraq currently holding center stage in the Democratic presidential primary, health care looks to have made an unlikely -- if temporary -- shift from the defining policy disagreement between Sens. Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama to just another topic on which the candidates concur. Last week, the National Nurses Organizing Committee sought to bring the conversation back to health insurance with a new radio buy in the closely contested primary state of Ohio.

The ad calls on politicians to support a single-payer national insurance system rather than require people to buy insurance from private providers. "The government should be protecting us from insurance companies, not forcing us to buy their products," an announcer says. While the spot doesn't mention any candidate by name, the proposals it criticizes are integral to Clinton's health care plan, which requires Americans to purchase health insurance, and absent from Obama's. (Earlier this month, the head of the California Nurses Association, a regional arm of NNOC, wrote an editorial criticizing Clinton's approach.)

While the nurses group is not the only third party currently advertising in Ohio, the radio spot is its first attempt to influence the presidential contest since New Hampshire, when it ran TV ads urging the top three Democratic candidates to support a single-payer national insurance system.