There’s powerful storytelling going on over at Obama’s grassroots website, Organizing for America,  and clearly the goal is to use gripping narrative to get Americans to stop thinking about health care reform and start feeling the need for change. The newest addition to this site is called “Health Care Stories for America” and it includes a neat, interactive map of the U.S. that is constantly updating with new stories of health care woe from real people across the country. Site visitors can click on a megaphone at the bottom of a story they like to help promote its status and increase the anecdote’s chance of being pegged on the interactive map.

Here is an excerpt from a highly rated story from “Barbara” in Wocester, MA who was faced with $65,000 in medical bills when her insurer denied coverage after her son was in a serious bicycle accident:

“It's the phone call in the middle of the night that no parent ever wants to receive. Your son, a student at George Washington University, has been taken by ambulance to the emergency room. The doctor on the other end of the line explains, as you desperately wake-up into the nightmare, that in a bicycle accident your child has landed on his jaw, has broken almost all the bones in his face and has lost many teeth. He's lucky; there was no spinal damage, no brain injury, no eye involvement, and he's alive. But even after 5 hours of surgery, and 8 titanium plates installed into his face, you are told that reconstruction and recovery will take a year. Somehow your son gets through the long hospitalization, and the trauma. But there is no preparation for the next phone call: all further medical treatment is being denied by your insurance company.”

The Obama campaign plans to use stories from this site as the President conducts his “listening tour” around America to garner local support for his health plan and other issues that include energy policy and his Supreme Court nominee. Tomorrow alone, there are public meetings scheduled for several cities in New Hampshire, South Carolina and North Carolina. They will continue throughout the month of July as Congress remains in recess.

The use of anecdotes to influence health policy is not new; both sides used the technique during the 1993 battle over Clinton’s health plan. (The main difference being that conservative opponents used a fictitious couple—Harry and Louise—to act out a fictitious dilemma to make their point.)

But with the Organizing for America site and similarly powerful anecdotes popping up on a slew of other health care advocacy sites, the battle for the soul of health care reform has reached new heights. This time the sheer quantity of the powerful anecdotes—the majority aimed at illustrating fundamental flaws in the health care system—speaks to the idea that making policy personal is going to be key in gaining support from the U.S. public.

It’s likely that most of us have had a claim denied and been forced to call an insurance company or Medicare office or employer to try and wrangle coverage. Many of us have had to pay more than we think we should out of pocket for a visit to a specialist or out-of-network provider. Some of us have been uninsured while between jobs or have had to buy expensive individual plans because our employers won’t pay for family coverage. But the stories amassing on YouTube, on websites like Organizing for America, and in magazines and newspapers are tugging at deeper emotions—the fundamental fear we all have of being sunk financially by catastrophic medical bills combined with being denied care for serious health problems.

The story-telling technique will soon air nationally in paid political messages that are being sponsored by the consumer group Families USA in cooperation with its former adversary, PhRMA, the drug industry group. According to this Politico posting the ads will run on cable news channels like CNN, Fox News and CNBC and will feature the stories of seven real people and their struggles with health care costs. The ads are timed to hit while lawmakers are back in their districts preparing for a July dominated by health care reform.

On its website, the Bangor [ME] Daily News  has an article that reveals how anecdotes are being used by any number of groups to advocate for health reform—or, to a lesser extent, to fight for the status quo. This piece talks about a local carpenter who was saddled with $165,000 in medical bills that resulted from his hospitalization after his truck rolled over on black ice last winter. The carpenter, Greg Douglas, was touched by efforts made by his neighbors to raise money through yard sales, dinner and tin cans set up at local businesses to help defray his expenses.
According to the item, Carpenter “is among thousands of people now telling their stories on videos, ads and Web sites on both sides of the health care debate.
“Douglas, whose video, called “Begging for Change,” was posted on YouTube by Maine’s Service Employees union, depicts fundraising 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 fundraising 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.”

The Bangor article goes on to note:
“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 like 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.”

The story of Katie Brickell is quite tragic:
Brickell asked for a Pap smear at her university when she was 20 and was told she didn’t need one until she was 25, the age for first screening in England. At age 23, Brickell was diagnosed with cervical cancer and it has since spread and become incurable.

Although this anecdote tugs at the same emotional heartstrings as many of the pro-health reform stories, using it to advocate for the status quo is disingenuous. Cervical cancer is most commonly caused by HPV, a sexually-transmitted virus. In the US the Preventive Services Task Force and the American Cancer Society both recommend that Pap smears be initiated within three years of onset of sexual activity or by age 21. It’s highly unlikely that health reform would include changing this well-accepted testing schedule. In other words, the government isn’t going to take away Pap testing in some misguided attempt at rationing. Using Katie’s story to oppose reform is just plain wrong.

How important health care narratives will be in driving home reform efforts is still to be determined. Americans have shown themselves to have short attention spans when it comes to trying to digest weighty policy material. In an interesting look at how Americans feel about paying more in taxes or other mechanisms to cover the uninsured, for example, Jane Sarasohn-Kahn at the blog “Health Populi” reports:

“The Kaiser Public Opinion Data Note of July 2009 looks at "Footing the Bill" for health reform. KFF examines the plethora of polls' questions on willingness to pay for expanding coverage, from CBS/New York Times, Quinnipiac (the political polling group at Q University), NBC/Wall Street Journal, CNN/Opinon Research Corporation, and KFF's own survey. Across the surveys, except for KFF's, there's roughly a 50/50 split between people willing versus not willing to pay for expanding health coverage to the uninsured.”

In many of these polls, respondents are “unsure” about how they feel on issues like taxing employer paid health insurance benefits; i.e. their eyes begin to glaze over when it comes to hammering out the details of financing reform. With the nation evenly divided over how much they want to commit to achieving reform, its time to appeal to emotions. Let the YouTube videos begin.