Protect Insurance Execs From Bad Rap

There's a fake PSA to "protect insurance companies" from all the mean things Democrats are saying about them up on FunnyorDie, starring Will Ferrell, Jon Hamm, Donald Faison (Turk from Scrubs), Robert Ben Grant of Reno 911, and others. According to the video, it was organized by MoveOn.org (MoveOn has yet to confirm):

See web-only content:
http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2009/09/protect-insurance-execs-from-bad-rap/27009/

Protect Insurance Companies PSA from Will Ferrell

However, a note of fact-checking: the claim that 80 percent of Americans support the public option, repeated both by Don Draper and Reno's Deputy Travis Junior, isn't actually true according to major polls. Public-option support is as 55 percent, according to a poll released Sept. 14 by The Washington Post and ABC, while a June 20 CBS poll placed it at 73 percent and an NBC/Wall Street Journal poll conducted by Hart/McInturff, also in June, put it at 76 percent. I'll update the post if I find out where the figure came from.

UPDATE: The 80-percent figure comes from a poll released by the Employee Benefit Research Industry on June 11. The survey actually showed 83 percent in favor of creating a public health insurance plan.

This article available online at:

http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2009/09/protect-insurance-execs-from-bad-rap/27009/