This weary election curator went without health insurance a few years after college. A cut on the back of my hand cost some $600 dollars. A headache in 2001 went for a whopping $1200!
But lo, here come our benevolent politicians to punt around what will undoubtedly become a major issue this election season. To help PRX, has some pre-game for programmers in Ohio (Texas coming soon):
SERIES: Barack Obama Addresses Health Care
SERIES: Hillary Clinton Addresses Health Care
These two collections pull together and organize audio from the candidates in order to help stations parse the main policy differences. Newsrooms of all sizes can work this audio into their newscast in a number of ways. Here’s some thoughts:
- Audio to hang vox around for a pulse of Ohio package
- Bumpers or conversation starters for call-in shows
- Promos for the debate or election night coverage
- Reporter packages that analyze the issues facing Ohioans.
If this last one is for you, I have some more tidbits. Ohio spent $3.6 billion in 2006 on medical care for the uninsured. This comes from the Health Policy Institute of Ohio and their report Mapping Health Spending and Insurance Coverage in Ohio. There’s enough data in this report for an enterprising reporter to dig down and come up with something good this week.
Want more?
How about county-level data on the uninsured here. This also comes from HPIO and can give your listeners a feel for the number of uninsured in their county.
For sources who can provide thoughtful insight into how the health care debate affects Ohioans, I’ve screened these two and recommend them both:
- Jason Sanford, spokesmen for the Health Policy Institute of Ohio (jsanford@healthpolicyohio.org). Sanford is better than the average press officer. He’s knowledgeable about Clinton’s and Obama’s health plans and has good and bad things to say about both. He makes no endorsement and has never donated to a political campaign (I checked).
- Nancy Cooper (coopern@ohio.edu) is the Program Coordinator for Ohio University’s Health Policy Fellowship (she runs the fellowship and supervises the research in health policy). She’s well informed and also is also not making endorsements (though she shows up in the FEC database as donating to Ronald Reagan).
My last tip: the Plain-Dealer is running their health-care story on Saturday. Still time to beat them!