Someone forwarded me an email update from our friends at the Center for American Progress Action Fund (motto: “Disagree with us? Then you hate progress.”).


In one blurb, CAPAF’s crack team of spin‐​disclosers chides Republicans for discussing health care reform using the language recommended by pollster Frank Luntz, who “advised Republicans to fearmonger” Obama’s proposals to death! Or something.


The same email had another blurb titled, “INSURANCE COMPANIES AT THE TABLE?” There, CAPAF’s crack team of spin‐​disclosers describe how “health insurance companies and lobbying groups” stood beside President Obama last week to announce their support for reducing spending growth. The blurb continues:

However, days later, the insurance companies tried to walk back their promises, saying Obama had overstated their commitments. Richard Umbdenstock, the president of the American Hospital Association, wrote to his company’s state and local affiliates to “clarify” that “[t]he groups did not support reducing the rate of health spending by 1.5 percentage points annually.” However, the letter to Obama signed by Umbdenstock and the other insurance leaders specifically pledged…

“Umbdenstock and the other insurance leaders”?? Since when do we classify hospitals as insurance companies? And if “the insurance companies…sa[y] Obama had overstated their commitments,” why not quote the insurance companies? Could they not find such a quote?


It’s as if CAPAF’s crack team of spin‐​disclosers has decided to blame every development that might threaten a — ahem — government take‐​over of health care on the insurance companies. Now why might they want to do that? Could it be because insurance companies are less popular than hospitals?


And how would CAPAF’s crack team of spin‐​disclosers know that? By listening to a … pollster?