Health Insurance Plan of California

It is hard to pick a favorite moment from our time representing the Health Insurance Plan of California (HIPC). There were the two press conferences that we organized for Governor Pete Wilson. Meeting David Broder and reading his superbly crafted piece in the Washington Post. Giving an interview to NBC Nightly News. Hearing President Clinton mention us in a State of the Union address. Certainly, snagging a hit in California Dry Cleaning News.

The HIPC was the nation's first manifestation of managed care, and its appearance happened to coincide with the White House’s doomed efforts to enact it on a federal level. As the lead PR contact on the account, Gordon Wright got a chance to manage a vast and complicated program, generating more than 1000 media hits valued in the millions of dollars.

But one publication steadfastly refused to cover the story, and it was critical: the Los Angeles Times. The Times' health writer at the time simply didn’t like the program – or at least had potent reservations as to its worth. After taking the dramatic step of arranging for and sitting through an editorial meeting in their headquarters, their top editorial staff still declined to cover the story.

In desperation, we noticed a health policy story in the Times written by a writer unfamiliar to us; some quick research revealed that he was based in the Washington D.C. bureau. In a classic, if risky, end-run, we pitched this writer, who delivered with a front page, above-the-fold story in the Sunday edition of the LA Times.

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