1. Provide the title of your story or series and the names of the journalists involved.
"Midlife Crisis: The New Uninsured" –John Gonzales of the California HealthCare Foundation Center for Health Reporting and Tom Kisen of the Venturay County Star.
This article was partnership between the California HealthCare Foundation Center for Health Reporting and the Ventura (CA) County Star.
2. List date(s) this work was published or aired.
April 30-May 2, 2010.
3. Provide a brief synopsis of the story or stories, including any significant findings.
The nation's 75 million baby boomers are certainly not immune from the crisis in health care, and even those in relatively rich Ventura County are feeling the pressure of spiraling costs of both medical procedures and insurance. That is, if they still have insurance. Many Ventura County middle-class baby boomers have been pummeled by the economy, with jobs lost and health insurance disappeared, and the safety net they paid into during better times not designed to help them. Lawrence Hutton and his wife, Chong, of Oxnard, California, were cruising toward retirement with dreams of owning the road on their $18,000 Honda Gold Wing motorcycle. He was bringing home $110,000 a year as an engineering manager. The plan was to work four more years, then take off to visit every national park. That plan is dead. In December 2008, just two months shy of his 20th year at Kavlico Engineering & Manufacturing, Hutton was let go – "downsized right out the door." Now 58, Hutton is sick with a neurological disorder but still has health coverage. Chong, 59, does not. They are worried sick that she'll get sick and there'll be no way to pay for it. Their concern is not irrational. The baby boom population is entering that phase of life when things start to go wrong. For example, CDC data show that in 2008 Californians 45-64 were nearly five times more likely to have diabetes than people 18-44. And according to the National Cancer Institute, people 50 and older were nearly 15 times as likely to contract cancer than people younger than 50. In a reflection both of the Hutton's age and of their circumstance, uninsured patients ages 45-64 nearly doubled at Ventura County hospitals and clinics between 2005 and 2009. For baby boomers, health coverage is fast becoming a luxury, not a norm. Two reporters spent eight weeks reviewing data from local, state and national agencies and health researchers in pursuit of this story.
4. Explain types of documents, data or Internet resources used. Were FOI or public records act requests required? How did this affect the work?
Reporters looked at state department of health data, local hospital and clinic data and UCLA-compiled data. And of course, they had to interpret data that was not meant for this kind of analysis. In several cases, they worked in concert with UCLA Center for Health Policy Research experts to insure accuracy.
5. Explain types of human sources used.
The reporters visited free clinics and community clinics, large and medium-sized hospitals, dialysis centers, employment centers and temp agencies. They consulted with insurance agents and insurance watchdog advocates. They interviewed more than 70 uninsured baby boomers and more than 40 doctors, safety net administrators, healthcare experts, county and state government officials and local, state and national healthcare advocates and professionals for this series.
6. Results (if any).
This was one of the earliest reports on how the economic meltdown affected not simply the poor and working class, but cleaved deeply into the middle class and, in this case, the growing-older-middle class. Much of what the reporters found on the ground validated both the fears and hopes of the experts who were trying to recommend policy to the state. In particular, the series' third day reveals that a federally aided, innovative Ventura County-run health plan called Access Coverage Enrollment, or ACE, is providing cost-effective coverage and health networks to 13,000 uninsured county residents. Experts say the experimental model may provide the bridge to 2014 Health Policy, though it is formally unrelated to the Health Policy measure and started three years before Health Policy was signed into law. There had been little or nothing written about the experimental program, funded in 9 other counties as well, until this series.
7. Follow-up (if any). Have you run a correction or clarification on the report or has anyone come forward to challenge its accuracy? If so, please explain.
The Ventura County Star has done a strong handful of stories expanding on the themes of the project, and the Center used it to formulate another project in a different part of the state.
8. Advice to other journalists planning a similar story or project.
There is no question that data drove this story. But the secret to these kinds of projects being successful, that is, read and responded to by the community, is people, people, people. You can find experts and administrators and officials and numbers to tell you that some phenomenon exists, but it doesn't exist for readers until you provide them with living, breathing examples. And these folks are not easy to find. They are not only elusive, many are recalcitrant. They simply want to keep their misery to themselves. It is hard work to bring them out, and you have to start early on that part of the story process to be successful.