Gov. Eliot Spitzer is on the side of babies. Are you?
That seems to be the basic thrust of the new TV ad the governor has unveiled in response to the campaign hospitals and labor unions kicked off last week against his proposed $1.3 billion in health care cuts. It features crying babies in a nursery who stop when the narrator describes the Steamroller's plans for them. The script is below, after the jump.
The amazing thing about Spitzer’s ad, if you watch it, is that you can’t really tell that he is proposing to drastically trim the Medicaid budget. You think all he wants to do is make sure babies have health insurance, and the special interests are for some reason opposed.
The reality, of course, is that part of his proposed savings would be used to fund the expansion of children’s health insurance, but the bulk of it would be used to fund big increases in school aid. In a counterpoint that has never been completely explained, he argues that NY's very costly schools need lots more money because they’re failing, whereas NY's very costly health care needs lots less money because it’s failing.
Script of the new ad:
“In New York, we fund a health care system that rewards institutions, insurance companies and unions, not patients, giving us the most expensive Medicaid system in the country and some of the highest rates of chronic disease. Eliot Spitzer’s healthcare plan, puts the money where it belongs, toward bringing patient care up and disease down, making sure that every single kid in New York will finally have medical coverage. And the only people crying about that are the usual special interests.”