Here’s a very incomplete commercial for Community Health Care Plan (CHCP) featuring McLean Stevenson, from November 1986. CHCP was a health maintenance organization (HMO) based out of New Haven, CT that operated from 1971 to 1996.
I originally posted this commercial fragment back in February 2009 but later took it down for reasons I can no longer remember. I likely assumed it was pointless to have it on the blog because it’s only the first five seconds of a longer commercial that ran 20 or 30 seconds.
Even incomplete, I think it’s an interesting curio for M*A*S*H fans. Notice that McLean is wearing a sweater with CHCP written on it, much like the University of Illinois sweaters Henry Blake often wore on M*A*S*H. His hat is likewise reminiscent of the hat Henry wore, although it doesn’t have any fishing lures on it.
Clearly, CHCP wanted viewers and potential patients to associate McLean with Henry Blake–unless that’s just how McLean liked to dress in 1986.
For the record, this commercial was taped from WTXX-TV (Channel 20) in Connecticut.
