Health Care Unions Pushing NBC To Cancel Ads Criticizing Obama Health Care Plans

The SEIU is one of the nation's largest unions, and has deep ties to the health care industry - namely that it wants to see its position assured. They oppose anyone critical of the Administration's plans to fundamentally alter the health care delivery system in the nation.

They aren't above demanding that an NBC affiliate not run a 30-minute infomercial by a group critical of the health care plans being concocted by the Administration and Democrats in Congress. (HT: Raymond Martins)

Progressive health care reform groups demanded on Thursday that Washington’s NBC television affiliate refuse to air a 30-minute infomercial funded by a conservative group opposed to creating a public insurance plan.

The Service Employees International Union sent a letter to NBC4, arguing that the station has a responsibility to pull the documentary-style commercial paid for by Conservatives for Patients’ Rights. The ad, set to run Sunday after “Meet the Press,” “will be false, deceitful, and a distortion,” the union’s attorney wrote in the letter.

The SEIU has not seen the ad, but is drawing the conclusion from CPR’s record of running “demonstrably false” ads. The station has the duty to protect the public from misleading advertising, the letter argues.

If the ad is aired and does contain falsehoods, CPR could face a fine from the Federal Communications Commission, said Levana Layendecker, the online campaigns director for Health Care for America Now, a coalition pushing to create a public insurance plan.

Let's see what's demonstrably false about CPR's claims. The funny thing is that the SEIU hasn't even seen the ad, and they're already attacking it as being false. What exactly was demonstrably false about prior ads run by the group - they don't say.

They're hoping to get the ad canned before it airs because some people might be swayed by what it has to say. Once the ad runs, it becomes that much harder for the SEIU to counter those claims, because they might have to actually defend their statements.

The SEIU isn't exactly some honest broker here or nonpartisan group. They have a whole lot of money riding on this endeavor, and they would be among the few people in the nation standing to gain from the left's attempts to rework the entire health care industry.