Bringing Health Reform Home:Stories for your Community

Barbara Feder OstrovDeputy Editor

ReportingonHealth.org3/13/10

Going beyond the local rally story

YOUR MANTRA:

Health reform is the peg, not the story.

The Backdrop

• Next week’s planned vote on health reform• States are moving to ban mandate to purchase

insurance• Lots of last-minute lobbying, rallies, media

coverage

Five Story Ideas

• Medical bankruptcies in your community• What is this going to cost me? • Rationing care for the uninsured• The In-Betweens: Before Medicare starts• Are local health agencies planning ahead?

Medical Bankruptcies

“In the campaign to broaden support for the overhaul of American health care, few arguments have packed as much rhetorical punch as the there-but-for-the-grace-of-God notion that average families, through no fault of their own, are going bankrupt because of medical debt.“

Kevin Sack, New York Times, “From the Hospitalto Bankruptcy Court,” November 24, 2009

What is this going to cost me?

Profile people from different walks of life about:• Their current health care costs, • How those costs affect the care they get• How they might be planning for the changes

ahead• How might health reform affect them?

Health Budget Cuts

• Longer wait times for primary care at free clinics?

• Longer waits for specialty care?

• Wait list for subsidized insurance programs like Healthy Families?

Rationing care for the poor

• Long waits for hernia and gall bladder surgery?

• What other care is rationed? • How do uninsured patients with cancer and

other serious diseases get specialized care?• How do they get medications? • Are HIV/AIDS patients better off than others?

The In-Betweens: What to do before Medicare starts

• How are people between the ages of 50 and 65 getting health insurance?

• Many have pre-existing conditions

• Individual insurance market most affected by proposed health reforms

Resources for staying informed…

Best Overviews

• California Healthline: digest of California health policy/access news

• Kaiser Family Foundation’s health reform page • New York Times Health Reform Topic page

Best Blogs

• Health Care Policy and Marketplace Review • Ezra Klein’s policy blog, Washington Post • The Treatment: blog of Jonathan Cohn, the

New Republic writer and author of "Sick" • New York Times’ Prescriptions blog

Best Data Sources

• HealthyCity.org: California-only data resource for community activists

• CHCF.org: data on health care access, insurance rates • CalHealthReform.org: background on California’s failed

health reform efforts • StateHealthFacts.org: comparisons of health costs, the

uninsured, etc.

If that seems like a lot to absorb,

Be glad you’re not this guy….

Questions?