Like Eagles reunion concerts, the Harry-and-Louise-are-back gimmick may never end. You remember Harry and Louise from ads in the 1990s — a middle class couple sitting in at their kitchen table, decrying their new health plan ever since “they” (read: the government) took over. “Having choices we don’t like, is no choice at all,” Louise sighs. “If they choose, we lose,” Harry adds. Sponsored by the health insurance industry, the ad, and several similar spots with the same actors, struck fear in many real American couples like Harry and Louise and was seen as an inflection point in the Clinton health plan’s downfall. Last year, a coalition that included the American Hospital Association and the advocacy group Families USA brought back Harry and Louise last year to push for health reform in the context of the presidential election. Now, Harry and Louise are back — again — this time in ads sponsored by the Families USA and PhRMA, the powerful pharmaceutical lobby. Only now they’re older, implicitly wiser and decidedly pro-health reform. “A little more cooperation, a little less politics and we can get the job done this time,” Louise says

emphatically at their new kitchen table. Harry and Louise aren’t just a fictitious couple, they’re the names of the same actors, Harry Johnson and Louise Caire Clark. In an interview with the AP they say they actually supported the idea of reforming the health care system in the 1990s and were Clinton supporters but had qualms about the Clintons’ effort to get more stakeholders on board. “The part was written for me by the producer and the director but I never said anything I didn’t believe,” Clark says. Now, she adds, she is optimistic President Obama can pull it off. “I don’t think they’re going to need us (for these ads) anymore,” she says. If the fight gets nastier, though, other Harries and Louises may be there to quickly take their place. In May, the Washington Post reported that Blue Cross Blue Shield of North Carolina had looked into making a series of videos rousing fears about a government-run health insurance option, with storyboards of patients waiting months for appointments and unable to choose their own doctors.

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Harry and Louise Are Back. Again.