Sam Husseini: Clinton Health Care Scam Revisited

What Hillary Rodham Clinton was referring to in a recent speech was a series of soap opera-style TV ads featuring a woeful couple, "Harry and Louise," and sponsored by the Health Insurance Association of America (H.I.A.A.). The First Lady positioned herself as a foe of big business; the media played right along.

Tom Brokaw introduced NBC's segment saying, "Hillary Rodham Clinton today launched a scathing attack on the health insurance industry." Correspondent Andrea Mitchell, working on the basis of anonymous sources, suggested that the Administration went after H.I.A.A. because "the White House wanted a scapegoat." On CNN reporters relayed that the Administration is "engaged in something close to an all-out war with the health insurance industry," and that "the White House would rather talk about insurance industry profits than the rosy assumptions on which its own plan is based."