July 25 (Bloomberg) -- The 45-year-old divorce mediator stares into the camera and says she would have died waiting for treatment of a brain tumor in her Canadian homeland. The message: Americans will face the same peril if President Barack Obama gets away with his plan to overhaul U.S. health care.

That Shona Holmes’s claims are disputed by government officials and independent analysts as misleading is almost beside the point. What matters to outside interests spending millions of dollars on such ads is whether they will work in shaping or scuttling Obama’s push for a $1 trillion overhaul.

“There’s this irresistible impulse to go over the cliff and make claims that sound more dramatic but actually aren’t based in reality,” said Brooks Jackson, director of the Philadelphia-based University of Pennsylvania Annenberg Public Policy Center’s Political Fact Check.

The advertising efforts come as Democratic leaders try to push a health-care overhaul measure through its final House committee next week to clear the way for a floor vote even as disputes within the party leave the bill’s passage in doubt.

House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer said some Democrats made “significant and positive progress” yesterday by agreeing on a plan to curb the growth of Medicare spending. It didn’t satisfy a group of self-described fiscal conservative “Blue Dog” Democrats who threaten the measure’s approval in the Energy and Commerce Committee.

Obama and Democratic leaders are meeting resistance over the cost of the legislation and how it would extend insurance coverage, including the creation of a public insurance plan to compete with companies such as Minnetonka, Minnesota-based UnitedHealth Group Inc. and Indianapolis, Indiana-based WellPoint Inc.

Chamber of Commerce

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce added to the campaign to sway public and congressional opinion this week by announcing a $2 million advertising buy in five states. The ads criticize Obama’s approach, saying “the government already gets the shirt off your back.”

The ad featuring Holmes and the story of her brain tumor plays on the emotional nature of her case. It also said that “some patients wait a year for vital surgeries” in Canada, suggesting that American patients would face similar problems under the president’s proposals.

Canadian System

Neither Obama nor congressional Democrats are advocating a Canadian-style system. And Canadian health officials said that patients with life-threatening conditions aren’t subject to waiting periods. The New York-based Commonwealth Fund, a non- profit, non-partisan research group, found 8 percent of Canadians waited that long, and only for elective operations.

“Cancer surgery rated priority one is done very quickly,” said Kathleen Morris, senior consultant on the “Wait Times Project” of the Canadian Institute for Health Information. Patients with ailments such as a serious brain tumor “are seen immediately,” she said.

Groups promoting health-care overhaul are also placing bets. The Washington-based Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, representing drug companies such as New York-based Pfizer Inc. and Madison, New Jersey-based Wyeth, announced an ad campaign for national cable and network news programs using the “Harry and Louise” couple who helped doom U.S. health-care overhaul in 1994. This time, the fictional middle-class husband and wife are promoting it.

Koch Industries Funding

The ad in which Holmes appeared -- televised in eight states at a cost of $1.8 million -- was funded by the Americans for Prosperity Foundation, headed by David Koch, executive vice president of Wichita, Kansas-based Koch Industries Inc., a chemical company. Koch has given $135,300 to Republican candidates and committees since 2005, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, a Washington-based research group.

Koch Industries spokeswoman Melissa Cohlmia declined to comment.

The president is activating his own political organization, Organizing for America, which started running ads July 15 highlighting testimonials of Americans saying that the health-care system should be changed.

Both sides in the debate have been criticized for distorting the facts. The St. Petersburg Times’s Politifact found Americans United for Change claimed 62 percent support for Obama’s plans for remaking the health-care system, when that figure actually represented the percentage who wanted change in the current health-care system.

Private Insurers

Fact Check found Conservatives for Patients Rights, incorrectly said a public insurance plan would put private insurers out of business.

As for the Shona Holmes ad, Fact Check said it “sets up a straw-man argument” because “a purely government-run system isn’t what’s being seriously considered in Congress or being proposed by the president.”

Americans for Prosperity policy adviser Amy Menefee defended her group’s ads. “A lot of the people who are saying things are exaggerated are not taking things to their logical conclusions,” she said.

In the ad featuring Holmes, she said that if she “relied on my government for health care, I’d be dead.”

Holmes said in an interview that she initially went to the doctor because her peripheral vision was deteriorating. An MRI in Canada didn’t reveal a problem. She was referred to a specialist, and would have had to wait.

Mayo Clinic

Instead, she went to the Mayo Clinic in Scottsdale, Arizona, where a second MRI revealed a brain tumor. She then returned to Canada, and said she again was told she would have to wait to see a specialist. So she went back to the Mayo Clinic for surgery, costing her $100,000.

She told her story to the House Energy and Commerce health subcommittee June 23, testifying that her sight rather than her life was in jeopardy.

This year, Americans for Prosperity sponsored the anti-tax tea parties and waged campaigns against Obama’s stimulus package and legislation to curb emissions blamed for global warming.

“We’re doing everything we can do to limit government involvement in our lives,” Menefee said. “This is one of the biggest government power grabs that we’ve seen in a long time.”

To contact the reporters on this story: Jonathan D. Salant in Washington at +1-202-624-1832 or jsalant@bloomberg.net; Nicole Gaouette in Washington at +1-202-624-1924 or ngaouette@bloomberg.net.

Last Updated: July 25, 2009 00:01 EDT