AMA campaigns for the uninsured

The AMA Voice for the Uninsured initiative has gone nationwide in its effort to encourage political candidates and voters to focus on the issue.

Editorial. Feb. 11, 2008.

Forty-seven million people in America don't have health insurance. The number is so big that it becomes abstract. It's too large to get your mind around. It's impersonal.

But behind the statistic are faces, people with life stories. Forty-seven million of them.

The personal level is where the national debate should focus. That's the message underlying the American Medical Association's Voice for the Uninsured campaign. The initiative, which just went national after being launched last fall in the early primary states, aims not only to put a face on the problem but also to encourage candidates to address the issue and citizens to vote with it in mind come the November elections.

The $15 million campaign features print, television, radio and Internet advertisements.

"One out of seven isn't just a statistic. It's a woman who chooses her blood pressure meds over her Parkinson's meds because she can't afford both," reads an AMA ad in U.S. News & World Report. The text accompanies a photo of a middle-age woman who really is uninsured. The ad goes on to say that although one in seven Americans lacks health coverage, "we all have access to a voting booth. Please vote with this issue in mind."

The campaign also includes podcasts featuring the music and stories of musicians who have gone without insurance. The AMA initiative will reach out to voters through healthy-lifestyle events and mobile billboards and will include profiles on the popular social networking sites MySpace and Facebook.