Our Point of View

March 19, 2009

Kaiser Permanente Ads Call Attention to the Issue of Health Care Disparities

Calling the fact that millions of Americans lack health care coverage “a national disgrace,” Kaiser Permanente ran a series of print advertisements this week in leading publications in California and Washington, D.C.

 
Click on picture to download pdf of ad

The ads, which focus on health care disparities in the Latino and Asian/Pacific Islander communities, note that Americans spend $2.5 trillion* on health care and yet millions of uninsured Americans forego care and get sick solely because they lack coverage. The ads also direct readers to Kaiser Permanente’s Web site for information about health care disparities in America: www.kp.org/healthdisparities.

Each print ad is headlined, “Health Care in America is Too Often Unequal.”

The ads ran on Monday, March 16, in these publications: La Opinion (Los Angeles), Sacramento Bee, San Gabriel (Calif.) Newspaper Group, Politico, Roll Call, and CQ Weekly. The ads ran in The Hill on Tuesday, March 17, and will run Friday, March 20, in the National Journal.

The campaign builds on an ad focusing on disparities in the African-American community that ran in the Oakland (Calif.) Tribune last November.

You can view full-sized PDFs of the ads by clicking the thumbnail images above. For more information, view Kaiser Permanente’s Health Disparities Web site, http://www.kp.org/healthdisparities

*The ad that was published in late 2008 quotes a figure of $2.3 trillion, which was the current estimate at the time of publication. The $2.5 trillion figure in the most recent ads is derived from more recent estimates.