By Joe Frandino

Conservatives are ramping up their lies and fear mongering tactics to attempt to slow progress in the growing calls for American health-care reform.

The Americans for Prosperity Foundation plans to launch a “$1.7 million television-advertising campaign that negatively likens the U.S. health-care system envisioned by lawmakers to Canada’s publicly administered system,” though the proposed American plan has little resemblance to the Canadian system.

The Conservatives for Patients’ Rights plans a $20 million TV ad campaign beginning this Sunday that features 30-minute segments of uninterrupted commentary by doctors and patients from the UK and Canada (both government-directed health-care systems) describing the failings and shortcomings in their respective systems.

What these Conservative organizations fail to realize is the presence of choice within the proposed American system. The point of the public option is it offers Americans the ability to choose what kind of coverage they want—a choice they currently don’t have. Where Americans are currently forced to adhere to the private sector health-care system, and British and Canadian citizens are subject to only the nationalized health-care system, the proposed American system gives citizens the ability to choose.

Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus (D., Mont.) told reporters last week that he was trying to craft “a uniquely American solution” where people who like their health insurance can keep it.

The negative ads are scheduled to air in eight states with influential health-care lawmakers in Congress, including Montana, Virginia, Arkansas, Louisiana, South Dakota, Indiana, Alaska, and Nebraska. This just goes to show how much your efforts are needed to help counteract the fear tactics being used by these conservative groups to try and delay the right, necessary and impending change in the American health-care system, specifically in the states mentioned above that will be soon be bombarded with these negative ad campaigns.