AMA Touts Plans for Uninsured Americans

By LINDSEY TANNER

CHICAGO – The nation’s largest doctors’ group on Thursday launched a multimillion-dollar media campaign to promote its proposals for helping uninsured Americans get health insurance.

The American Medical Association calls its campaign “Voices for the Uninsured” and placed full-page color ads promoting it in Thursday’s New York Times and USA Today.

The AMA’s solution includes tax credits and increasing federal funds to expand government programs, including the State Children’s Health Insurance Program and Medicaid.

The group’s president-elect, Dr. Nancy Nielsen, said some people assume the uninsured all are homeless or unemployed.

But today, they’re “your own families or your working neighbors,” she said at a Washington, D.C., news conference.

Nielsen, the mother of five, said she was uninsured while in graduate school. She recalled lacking money to feed her young children after paying for emergency care when one of them got sick.

“If this can happen to me, it can happen to anyone,” Nielsen said.

The AMA is spending $5 million on the initial campaign, timed to coincide with the upcoming presidential elections. It will involve newspaper, television and radio ads in early primary states including Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina. It will go national next year and will include lobbying Congress to pass legislation to “fix this national problem.”

The AMA joined other interest groups earlier this year including AARP and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce to advocate for helping the nation’s 45 million uninsured.

“One out of seven of us doesn’t have health insurance. But we all have a voice and a vote,” the AMA’s ads say. “Please vote with this issue in mind.”

The AMA doesn’t endorse candidates for president but is urging presidential hopefuls to incorporate its proposals into their health-care platforms.

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On the Web:

AMA campaign: http://www.VoiceForTheUninsured.org