Health Care to Get the Hollywood Treatment

More than 500 Hollywood writers and producers are working with senior advocacy group AARP to bring attention to the need to provide affordable health care, the groups will announce today.

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Divided We Fail, an AARP campaign that wants to find bipartisan ways to make health care affordable, will work with the Hollywood Radio & Television Society, the Entertainment Industry Foundation and the Motion Picture & Television Fund to make sure health care messages are included in the story lines of popular TV shows and movies.

"People are worried," says Nancy LeaMond, AARP's executive vice president of social impact. "They're putting their money into day-to-day survival. We started thinking what was really important was to reach out through popular culture. There's nothing more effective."

About 49 million Americans don't have health insurance, according to AARP statistics. And more middle-class people file for bankruptcy because of health care-related expenses than for any other reason, the group says.

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During a luncheon in Los Angeles on Thursday, writers and producers will share personal anecdotes, as well as clips from shows that have tackled health care.

"The filmmakers, the storytellers, are the ones who are going to make this happen," says Jeffrey Katzenberg, chairman of the Motion Picture & Television Fund and CEO of DreamWorks Animation SKG. "They know how to entertain and enlighten at the same time."

Among the steps campaign members plan to take:

Producing TV shows and movies that talk about health care issues in an accurate way.

Pushing health care with political leaders.

Setting an example by examining in-house health insurance plans.

"We're entering the height of the political debate," Katzenberg says. "We all understand how much these next four to eight years represent as far as the future and direction of health care."

Neal Baer, producer of "Law & Order: SVU," says he was drawn to the AARP campaign because he is also a pediatrician. While at Harvard Medical School, he read a script for "ER" and ultimately spent six years as its executive producer.