Health-overhaul advocates, foes put stories online

CHICAGO (AP) — When carpenter Greg Douglas crashed his pickup truck, his toolbox hit him and smashed his ribs and collarbone. After a month in the hospital, the medical bills hit him even harder, totaling $165,000.

Douglas is among thousands of people now telling their stories on videos, ads and Web sites on both sides of the health-care debate.

He said he was drawn into political advocacy after neighbors in Harpswell, Maine, raised $3,000 toward his hospital bills with a church dinner and collection cans in stores.

Douglas said he may not understand the intricacies of President Barack Obama’s top domestic priority, but he knows he wants affordable health care for everyone, so nobody has to beg.

“People aren’t standing up to be counted,” Douglas said, explaining why he allowed his name to be used in a political YouTube video. “I just hope I can help somebody else.”

The “Begging for Change” video, posted on YouTube by Maine’s Service Employees union, depicts fund-raising efforts on behalf of Douglas and other people with crushing medical bills. It includes shots of a yard-sale sign with photos of a sick baby on it, and a poster for a fund-raising dinner that reads, “You Gotta Eat Anyway, Have a Heart and Help out a Neighbor.” Similar snapshots fade in and out while a musician sings the “Begging for Change Healthcare Blues.”

Foes of expanding government-run health care also have stories of real people on YouTube and in advertisements. Ads by Conservatives for Patients’ Rights feature patients such as Katie Brickell, a British citizen, who says she was denied a Pap smear that could have saved her from cervical cancer.

“In all likelihood, I only have a couple of years,” Brickell says in a YouTube version of her story. “I feel the National Health Service has let me down.”

Voters and lawmakers may be moved by the stories or turned off by what they see as emotional pandering. But in the weeks to come, the airwaves and blogosphere are sure to be populated by real people telling what happened to them when they got sick.

Obama’s political operation, Organizing for America, put up a Web site last week where people can post their own health-care tales and read the stories of others. The site says: “When the lobbyists for the status quo tell Congress to hold back, your personal story will give them the courage to press forward.”

What’s lost in the storytelling is policy nuance and the difficult question of how to finance an expansion of health coverage, said health economist Devon Herrick of the Dallas-based National Center for Policy Analysis, a research group that favors private solutions over government involvement. The real-people tactic, whether used by the left or the right, can distract from tough debate, he said.

“We can’t have policy by anecdote,” Herrick said. Stories of people who have fallen through the cracks “have an oversized influence on the debate even as they obscure the greater question of what will help most people. Even a policy that does the greatest good may still have people who fall through the cracks.”

Families USA started its story bank before President Bill Clinton’s 1993 failed attempt to retool the health-care system. The group now has a database of thousands of people with stories to tell.

In 1993, the real stories could not compete with doubts raised by a fictional couple, Harry and Louise, who at a kitchen table asked questions about the Clinton plan in ads financed by the health-insurance industry. This time, it will be different, said Ron Pollack, executive director of Families USA.

“I ultimately believe real stories are more effective than using actors in some dramatization,” he said.

Last week, Families USA and the drug lobby group Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America launched a multimillion-dollar ad campaign using real people, including business owners.