You may recall the “Track Meet” video that MoveOn.org produced back in October advocating the public option and starring Heather Graham.

Well, it’s been a few months now with little progress and “Roller Girl” has just about had it with those of you who aren’t on board with the public option.

Thanks for the link, Sharp Elbows!

Congressghoul Nancy Pelosi (D-CA)

SUNRISE, Fla. (AP) – A government-sponsored “public option” for health care lives, though it may be more attractive to skeptics if it goes by a different moniker, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said Monday.

In an appearance at a Florida senior center, the Democratic leader referred to the so-called public option as “the consumer option.” Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, D-Fla., appeared by Pelosi’s side and used the term “competitive option.”

Now she just needs to rebrand the “private option” (i.e. insurance companies). She should probably get some ideas from Alan Grayson, but in the meantime, here’s a few to consider:

1. Death Merchants
2. Profit-Crazy Murdermen
3. Evil Option

This is hilarious, and I can hardly believe it exists.

Heather Graham, well-stretched and wearing track gear, starts with about a 10-yard head start and yet all these business-dressed, apparently out-of-shape avatars for insurance companies manage to quickly catch up with her.

This “race” metaphor is so dumb, but it’s only made worse by selecting an actress who is clearly not very athletic, then inexplicably, showing her quickly lose ground to the rest of the group. (Where are her rollerskates?)

Bad metaphor, poorly executed. Kind of suggests the opposite of what they wanted.

I predict somebody parodies this by Friday, and the parody– in addition to being more clever and better executed– receives substantially more views than the original.

Comments on the YouTube video are blocked. Awesome stuff, MoveOn.org.

UPDATE: More from Allahpundit.

Potemkin medicine on the White House lawn

Look at this absurd pageantry from Obama’s meeting with doctors at the White House yesterday. Yes, that woman is passing out white lab coats.

It would have looked staged even if only 90% of the doctors wore lab coats, so it’s pretty funny that the White House thought that every single doctor should wear a lab coat, regardless of whether they would ever use one at work.

I guess we’re getting a preview of the uniformed civil servants that Obama wants to see run this country.

Take it from me. You should pass this shit.

But next time they should probably keep it simple and just get the cast from ER and Scrubs. They’ve already fallen in line for Obamacare.

From the New York Post: White House’s botched ‘Op’. Via Instapundit.

UPDATE: More from Gateway Pundit and Ed Morrissey at Hot Air.

Selected bullet points from the Organizing for America website:

The President’s plan:

Ends discrimination against people with pre-existing conditions.

That sounds good.  People certainly shouldn’t be denied access to healthcare for being sick.  But…this does increase costs to the insurance industry.

Limits premium discrimination based on gender and age.

Discrimination…always bad, right?  Although adjusting premiums based on risk levels is how insurance companies operate at a profit, and this would take that away.  Oh well…profits are evil anyways.

Caps out-of-pocket expenses so people don’t go broke when they get sick.

No one should have to declare bankruptcy just because they got sick and had some medical bills.  But if we cap expenses to the people, we also cap revenues to the insurance companies.

Won’t add a dime to the deficit and is paid for upfront.

Whew!  I was really starting to get worried about the deficit.

Offers a public health insurance option to provide the uninsured and those who can’t find affordable coverage with a real choice.

“The public option”:  sounds like a sturdy, earnest safety net for hardworking Americans.  There’s no way it could ever become a monolithic government money pit, right?  Medicare/Medicaid has ballooned up to about $700 billion a year with costs spiralling out of control – but I’m sure the “public option” would remain a fairly small, insignificant government expenditure…unless something happened like…the collapse of the health insurance industry?

Fortunately, there’s no way the health insurance industry could possibly collapse.  Unless, perhaps the government were to

1. Increase costs by mandating coverage
2. Remove the ability to adjust premiums based on risk levels
3. Cap revenues to the insurance companies

The arrogance of our politicians to think that they can micromanage the minutiae of a 15 trillion dollar economy, from healthcare expenses to car manufacturing, will only end in tragedy.  We have only to look so far as the grand communist experiment of the Soviet Union to understand this.  Learning from past experiences and applying that knowledge to future endeavors is a fairly fundamental human characteristic.  Why are we allowing our politicians to ignore logic and reason?