Expensive “Weasel Words”
This morning’s Wall Street Journal featured an editorial regarding the recently released documents indicating the federal government spent more than $3 million on its Andy Griffith ad campaign last year (i.e., just before the midterm election). HHS spent $754,000 (plus production costs) promoting the first ad, entitled “1965,” which the non-partisan factcheck.org said used “weasel words” regarding Medicare’s “guaranteed benefits” because “for millions of seniors, benefits won’t remain the same.” At more than three quarters of a million dollars for a 59-word advertisement, that amounts to nearly $12,800 for each “weasel word” – at a time when the federal government is running trillion-dollar deficits.
On a related note, the Ways and Means Committee just announced a hearing on AARP’s insurance practices for next Friday. Even as AARP recently wrote to its members telling them “what’s at stake” in the debate over repealing the health care law, the hearing should examine the organization’s own financial stake in preventing its repeal – and precisely whether, what, and how the “most transparent” Administration cut backroom deals harming seniors (while advantaging the White House’s political allies in the process).