WATCH: Will Ferrell, Jon Hamm Trash Public Option In 'Protect Insurance Companies' PSA

[Cash_thatswhatiwant]

In a satiric video from Funny or Die, Will Ferrell, Jon Hamm, Olivia Wilde, and other celebs band together to "protect" insurance company profits from the evils of health care reform.

"People are saying a lot of mean things about health insurance companies and their executives and it's gotta stop," pleads Thomas Lennon.

"These great business men are American heroes," says Linda Cardellini.

"So why is Obama trying to reform health care when insurance companies are doing just fine making billions of dollars in profit?" Will Ferrell asks.

Funny or Die has history of using celebrities and humor to take a stance on political issues. Last year they released "Prop 8: The Musical" starring Jack Black, Neil Patrick Harris, Margaret Cho, and more satirizing the push for a ban on gay marriage in California.

This "Insurance PSA," paid for by and produced with MoveOn.org, ends with a call to action, asking people to call their congressmen and tell them we need a strong public option.


watch at http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/09/22/protect-insurance-compani_n_294406.html

[Captain Hilts]

1. The president says insurance companies provide an important service. I'm not sure what it is.

I received medical treatment through the military and Canada without insurance companies 'helping'.

[NYCGirl]

2. They employ millions of people. That's an important thing right now. NT

[Winterblues]

6. I do not believe that could you provide a link

Maybe in the entire Health Care Industry but not just the Insurance Companies. There really are not all that many of them.

[NYCGirl]

8. But they are very big companies (which is also a problem). I believe the

Pres said something about 2 million.

[eleny]

9. This article from September of 2007 says it was more like 444,000 back then

http://www.epi.org/economic_snapshots/entry/webfeatures_snapshots_20070919/

[NYCGirl]

10. In this economy, that's still far too many to be losing their jobs. NT

[rufus dog]

18. Damn, using your logic means freeing the slaves put millions out of work.

You are defending an immoral industry that provides very limited functional services.

[NYCGirl]

19. That's the very definition of a tortured analogy. NT

[bvar22]

23. Yes...The slaves were doing something useful.

Health Insurance Workers....well, they are just sucking blood from the system.

[NYCGirl]

26. I save my ire for the big insurance executives. Not the regular folks trying

to eke out a living. Many of them may even be Democrats!

[eleny]

22. A good number could fill positions once the public option was in place

There will be a need for workers when more people are in the P.O. I think you'd agree with that theory.

Surely you can see that the numbers are far less than you thought they were at first. The smaller number of jobs lost doesn't warrant keeping the current system, in my opinion.

[Festivito]

12. Yes, yes. Our GDP would drop by A TRILLION dollars! Awful!

Horrible. Despicable. Dreadful. Horrendous. Even bad.

Even a trillion and a half of wasted dollars, dollars used to deny people of healthy lives, is a trillion and a half dollars added to our GDP -- THAT WOULD DISAPPEAR, VANISH, AND JUST PLAINLY GO.

[NYCGirl]

15. We need to change their business practices, not put hundreds of thousands

more on the unemployment rolls.

Seeing everything in absolute shades of black and white is not good.

[Festivito]

21. Whoa. It was not important when the auto workers were dismissed.

And, auto workers made something we can use and sell, sell to ourselves and the world.

Not so with the insurance companies. They just add a layer of bureaucracy. They limit how good we can be to each other by their nature and then, worse, they take a portion of the means by which we help each other and squander that on themselves.

Further to the worse, they have gone wild with their portion. What ought cost one trillion a year, costs two-and-a-half trillion with the insurance companies creating the useless loss of 1.5 trillion dollars -- AFTER health care for all for everything is paid.

If we need to ameliorate their demise, fine. Auto workers get unemployment insurance. So can the insurance workers.

BTW I was joking that GDP should be our first concern. It's a stupid measure of progress. I'm not joking about being rid of insurance companies.

[Captain Hilts]

14. Yes, that's true. But we didn't protect other professions. nt

[NYCGirl]

16. We didn't? Isn't that what part of the stimulus package is all about? NT

[rurallib]

4. they take your money divide it into 3 piles.

Then they pay your medical bills with two piles of the money while putting one pile into their pocket.
The service provided is to prove that Americans ain't as smart as they claim to be.
Sometimes just to drive the point home, they DON'T pay your medical bills.

[eleny]

5. They count the beans and keep as many as they can

Then they can give more beans to politicians who will let them keep counting the beans...

[sandnsea]

17. Half the country loves their capitalism

So what the hell is he supposed to say. They don't want to be forced to pay the government any more than you want to be forced to pay an insurance company. It's just the way it is.

[NYCGirl]

3. Mmmmmmm…Jon Hamm. NT

[OmmmSweetOmmm]

7. Your reaction is the same as mine, like a Pavlovian response. Mmmmmmmm :)

[aquart]

11. Move On is delightfully wicked.

Must run to attend their protest. Ta ta.

[DemoTex]

13. Mad Men (and Women)

Excellent!

[Joe Chi Minh]

20. Under Catholic teaching, for the insurance companies to take people's hard-earned premiums and then

cheat them of their cover when they need it, cries to heave for vengeance on two scores: holding back the labourer's wages, and oppression of the poor. Your day will come CEOs and directors. And your contrition will be too little and too late.

To pay bonuses to the staff members who implement the cheating of the policyholders, once they fall half-seriously ill, simply beggars belief. It is difficult to imagine anything being able to give capitalism a worse name than it currently enjoys in the West among the citizenry; indeed it all together defies the imagination. A cameo of corporatism in the very abyss of its wickedness.

[bvar22]

24. Extremely Well Done.

:patriot:

[OmmmSweetOmmm]

25. Kick and recommend.

[BlooInBloo]

27. Funny Or Die has had a bunch of awesome shit like that.