The Times-Union is in the business of telling stories.
There are many important stories waiting to be told about a crisis that affects many in this community: access to affordable healthcare. More than 41 million Americans, 1 in 7, reported problems obtaining medical care in 2001, reported The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, a non-partisan research organization. Cost usually was the barrier.
This is not an issue that affects only the poor and minorities. Working families are affected, too. And the Florida Chamber of Commerce is studying the issue.
It’s not just the old, either. Many college students have no health insurance. Some federal aid for children’s health care is not even used in Florida.
Survivors of cancer and other diseases, in a cruel irony, find that surviving a serious illness makes them unable to obtain or afford health insurance. If the disease doesn’t kill them, the financial worries will.
A man with a disability finds that the medical system would rather pay more money to institutionalize him than to pay less for in-home care.
New immigrants, reluctant to ask for help in negotiating the confusing bureaucracies of the American health care system, go without care.
Rural residents, who have no access to medical facilities, must go to great lengths to obtain services in neighboring counties.
These were some of the stories told to a group of Times-Union reporters and editors at a recent breakfast meeting.
Editor Patrick Yack asked me to bring together a group of readers who are working within this straining health care system. Leaders from government, the volunteer community, the medical community and refugee services met to enlighten journalists at the Times-Union building. If there is a safety net, it’s riddled with holes, these health experts said. Similar discussions and forums are being held throughout the city on the medically underserved.
One member of the panel asked the Times-Union to report and editorialize in ways that humanize, not politicize, the issue. An example was an editorial last Sunday that described how a North Carolina city set up a private-public partnership to cover 90 percent of its uninsured residents.
More news coverage is on the way. Let me know what you would like to see and I will share your ideas with the staff and management.
Dear Reader Advocate: I was once told that on the front page of the newspaper the editor places the most important article on the far right edge, then works back toward the left edge with lesser-ranked stories. Isn’t this backward? Why not from left to right? — J.K., St. Augustine
Dear J.K.: Research is sketchy. But few readers have complained about it. Mario Garcia of the Poynter Institute in St. Petersburg, a newspaper design consultant, said that research 40 years ago showed that most people look first at the right-hand side of the page. In the 1980s, when Poynter tracked eye movement as people read newspapers, they found that the dominant photo is the main point of entry, regardless of placement.
In the Times-Union, the main news item on the front page is the one with the largest, boldest headline, no matter which side of the page it’s placed.
