# Harry and Louise Harry and Louise were a married couple in their forties who sat at their kitchen table in 1993 and 1994 and worried aloud about President [[Bill Clinton]]'s health care plan, the [[Clinton Health Care Plan]] of 1993. They did not exist. They were actors in a year-long television campaign paid for by the health insurance industry's trade association, and they became the best-known opponents of a bill that never came to a vote. The campaign is the model for something now routine: an industry advertising directly to the public against legislation. ## The ads There were fourteen television spots, with radio and print alongside. The format barely changed. The couple sit with a stack of papers and read out things they have just learned about the plan. It will be run by bureaucrats. It will limit their choices. The best-remembered exchange has Louise say that having choices they don't like is no choice at all, and the two of them finish: "They choose." "We lose." Each spot ended by asking viewers to call a toll-free number or their member of Congress. The tone was worry, not anger. ## Who made it and who paid The sponsor was the **Health Insurance Association of America**, the trade group for small and mid-sized health insurers, which later merged into what is now [[America's Health Insurance Plans]]. Its president, former Republican congressman Bill Gradison, and its executive vice president, Chip Kahn, commissioned the campaign. The ads were made by the California firm Goddard Claussen, run by Ben Goddard and Rick Claussen. The actors were Harry Johnson and Louise Caire Clark. The campaign ran on and off from **September 8, 1993** to September 1994. Most accounts put the cost at about $14 million; some run as high as $20 million. The *New York Times* estimated in August 1994 that more than $50 million had been spent on advertising about the plan from all sides, most of it by opponents. ## Did it work? This is the most interesting question about the campaign, and the usual answer is too simple. The White House treated the ads as a serious threat. Bill and [[Hillary Clinton]] both attacked them publicly, and news coverage of the ads became a story of its own. A study by the University of Pennsylvania's Annenberg School, released in June 1994, found something different. Few people recalled seeing the ads, and those who had were not much moved by them. The ads, it concluded, had not swung public opinion against the plan. But the study credited the insurers with a smart campaign all the same, because the ads had a large effect on a small audience: the White House, members of Congress and reporters in Washington, who came to believe the public was turning because of them. In other words, the ads may have worked less by persuading voters than by persuading politicians that voters had been persuaded. A later Annenberg count found that 59 percent of the television ads about health reform, from all sides, were misleading. ## What happened next Congressional support drained away through the summer of 1994. On September 26 the Senate majority leader declared the effort dead, without a floor vote in either chamber. Six weeks later Republicans won control of Congress in the [[1994 Midterm Elections]]. The characters outlived the bill, and what they were used for next says a good deal about the genre: | Year | Paid for by | Message | |---|---|---| | 2000 | The same insurers' association | Cover the uninsured, through private insurance | | 2002 | A patient advocacy group, CuresNow | Don't ban therapeutic cloning. The insurers sued over rights to the characters and lost | | 2008 | A coalition including Families USA, hospitals and the small-business lobby | Make health reform a priority | | 2009 | Families USA and [[PhRMA]], about $4 million | Pass health reform | In 2009 the same two actors sat at the same kind of table and argued for the reform effort that became the [[Affordable Care Act]], partly on the drug industry's money. Harry and Louise had not changed their minds. They were characters, available to whoever paid. ## Why it's on the map - **It created the national issue ad.** (The wiki's page on the broader practice is [[Advocacy Advertising]].) Before 1993, industries fought bills by lobbying members of Congress. After it, a television campaign aimed at the public, with a toll-free number at the end, became a standard line in a lobbying budget. Ben Goddard is often credited with inventing the genre. - **The sponsor stayed out of the picture.** Nothing in the scenes told a viewer that the worried couple spoke for insurance companies. It sits close to what the wiki describes as [[Astroturfing]]: a paid message dressed as an ordinary person's concern. - **Its audience was Washington.** The Annenberg finding is the lesson that lasted. An ad does not have to move the public if it moves the people who think they are watching the public move. That is an influence technique, and it belongs with the wiki's pages on [[Lobbying]] as much as with its pages on advertising. - **It is the reason this section is not called "Political Ads."** No candidate, no election, no party: an industry, a bill and a budget. ## Connections - [[Clinton Health Care Plan]] — the bill the ads were aimed at - [[Bill Clinton]] · [[Hillary Clinton]] - [[America's Health Insurance Plans]] · [[PhRMA]] - [[Affordable Care Act]] — the reform the characters were later hired to support - [[1994 Midterm Elections]] - [[Lobbying]] · [[Astroturfing]] · [[Advocacy Advertising]] - [[Political Ads Hub]]