Medicare video subject of investigation

Democratic Congresspersons are challenging the Bush administrations presentations about Medicare this week. Medicare's chief cost analyst claims his job was threatened in order to keep him from telling lawmakers his projected cost for the program. Now there is a flap about a video released to media outlets about the Medicare supplement.

To borrow a question from Letterman:

Is this something? Is this unethical? Is it an advertisement disguised as a news story? Or is it an acceptable way to try to win public opinion on an important policy issue?

To clarify, I am asking about the video new release that has government employees acting as Washington reporters.

The government's use of video news releases to promote changes in Medicare's drug plan has Democratic opponents calling it a political ploy. The releases, which include actors posing as journalists, are sent to media outlets in the hope that the clips will be used in their broadcasts.
http://www.npr.org/features/feature.php?wfId=1768575

It's pure propoganda brought to you by the United States government and people like you--thank you. (PBS Humor)

The whole history of this bill should cause everyone to pause and think.

• Congressional leaders violated House rules in extending the voting period on the bill up to three hours after the initial vote count came up short.
• During debate of the bill, Rep. Nick Smith (R- MI) changed his vote to "yes" after veiled threats and bribery attempts (later recanted by Smith) by unnamed parties, including promises of $100,000 from business interests for his son's congressional campaign.
• AARP, which originally opposed the bill, reversed course after an intense lobbying effort by various parties.
• The White House rolled out a taxpayer funded multi-million dollar ad campaign to defend the faulty legislation. The GAO has since stated the ads misrepresented the prescription drug benefits and included "notable omissions and other weaknesses."
• Last week, it came to light that the Bush administration threatened to fire the government's leading actuary on Medicare costs if he did a full Monty of program costs before the bill came up for a vote.

And now the video.

It isn't the video itself that bothers me so much as the apparent misrepresentation of the video by Health and Human Services. From what I understand, it was peddled as a true "human interest" news piece, so it would actually be picked up as a feed by news organizations. If any arm of the government has to resort to such skullandbonesduggery to sell a program, Houston, there's a problem.

The bottom line is that the Bush administration was willing to go for broke on this bill. I can't for the life of me figure out why, when it's not even close to universally accepted as a good thing. Of course, my brain is apparently not big enough to figure out a lot of what this administration is doing, or why.

Excuse me now while I go find my tinfoil hat.

Occam's Chainsaw: HMO - Health Maintenance Oxymoron