Nonprofit Groups’ Media Blitz on Health Care Reform to Focus on Californians

Hoping to draw Californians into the national health care reform debate, two nonprofit foundations said Thursday they will spend $2 million on a statewide radio, television and newspaper blitz “to get out basic information” on the issue.

The effort is part of a national drive by nonprofit groups to reach decision makers and influence the public outside Washington, and to bring the health care debate closer to home for many Americans.

“Surveys consistently show that people are confused and frustrated by the national health reform debate,” said Dr. Jonathan Fielding of the California Wellness Foundation, which is sponsoring the campaign with the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation.

Nationally, millions of dollars have been poured into health care media campaigns. Spending by the Health Insurance Assn. of America, which has been running a series of “Harry and Louise” ads that raise questions about President Clinton’s health plan, is up to $14 million. Among nonprofit organizations, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, the nation’s largest health philanthropy, has spent $12 million during the past year. That includes its controversial spending of $3.5 million on a two-hour NBC special on health care reform.

“There has already probably been more issue advertising around health care reform than any other issue we’ve ever had,” said Frank Karel of the Johnson Foundation, an enterprise with $3 billion in assets that is headquartered in Princeton, N.J.

Much of the advertising by nonprofits and interest groups until now has been targeted at opinion makers, the press and members of Congress who live in New York and Washington, or at the public in carefully selected swing states, according to media analysts who have tracked the ad campaigns. The theory is that most of the money should go where the power, at least over health care reform, resides.

For example, the last three Harry and Louise ads have not been shown in California. Dan DiFonzo, of the health insurance association, said the ads are being used mostly “in strategic areas (aimed) at members of Congress.”

Matt James, a spokesman for the Kaiser Foundation, said the media campaign reflects a strong “East Coast bias.” In addition to ads, “most news conferences and releases of reports and other information has been in Washington,” he said.

“California has been isolated, but I think that is also true for the rest of the country,” he added.

The new media effort will be the first targeted at California. The $2 million spent here will be in addition to $5 million spent by the Kaiser and Wellness foundations elsewhere in the country.

“As a philanthropy, we got tired of loose facts and rhetoric being thrown around by all sides on this issue,” James said.

Do not look for emotional messages in the ads, James said. “These are some of the most boring ads you will ever see,” he said. They will focus on explaining such basic facts as how many Americans lack health insurance, he added.

A print ad that will be carried in the Los Angeles Times and other newspapers will feature a photograph of a mother with two children and be loaded with statistics, like the often-cited estimate that 6.3 million people in California did not have health insurance coverage in 1992.

The ads simply lay out information, relying on U.S. census data and research articles in medical publications. The two foundations sponsoring the campaign say they have neither a financial nor political interest in any of the health care reform proposals.

Recently, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation also announced it was putting $2.5 million into a national health reform media campaign that will be run by Los Angeles-based Rock the Vote, a youth-oriented group that mobilized large numbers of first-time voters in 1992.