many mental health conditions can last a lifetime, the cost of treating these conditions is one that the nation can't afford so they are raising the cost issue. you and i know differently. we understand the real cost is absolutely going to be far more

expensive in the long run that we need to make that argument. i know all of you will be doing that on the hill very effectively. the facts speak for themselves. with mental illness our nation's leading cause of disability, it is no wonder that mental-health and substance-abuse problems are among the most chronic and disabling of all medical conditions for a good driving up healthcare costs and is trying employee productivity and school achievement, so obviously that needs to be addressed. an estimated 30% of patients visiting emergency rooms in one survey were found to be suffering from depression, only one mental-health issue. nine out of ten suicides, a suicide victim suffered from a treatable mental illness and a third of carnations population has a beard, treatable mental illness. between 85 and 95% of persons with severe treatable mental illnesses are unemployed.

people with serious mental illnesses died on an average of 25 years younger, earlier, younger than the rest of the population so all of these are really great faxed to get out there. further illustrating the importance of integrating mental-health in overall healthcare is the fact that many of our most chronic medical conditions such as heart disease have coley hearing mental health disorders and as a society, we can no longer afford not to treat those who are suffering particularly when effective treatments are within our grasp and with me know that they work. we can no longer afford to ignore the fact that mental health is a crucial and separable part of our health and well-being and as we focus more on integrating mental health and to our overall health focus we will fund greater opportunities to prevent this orders before they occur-- prevention. it is always a hard sell.

i don't understand that but it is always a hard sell. the reason iom report on the prevention of mental health problems in adolescence is a great step in the right direction. i can't say enough about the importance of potential for mental healthcare, so when clifford began his work to reform how mental illnesses were treated he focused on bringing science to the field of health and psychiatry. his ultimate goal was to focus not only on a cure but also on the means to prevent mental illness in the first place so people with mental illness can live full, productive, wonderful lives with proper diagnosis and treatment and is supported network of friends, family and services like those you help provide. so come together we can continue our work towards common sense public policies, those policies combined with compassionate citizen action, and the willingness of those who can

speak out about their experiences, can change prevailing attitudes and replace stigma with acceptance and entrance with understanding and fear with hope and opportunity. it has been said that a journey of a thousand miles looks begin with a single step for a 100 years ago clifford beers took a step when he wrote in his autobiography a mind that found itself "i'm not telling the story of my life just to write an article. i tell it because it seems my plane to the to do so blessed "like many breast cancer survivors before me, i did not start out wanting to discuss my treatment of clinical discussion, but like clifford beehrs i realized if i told my story it might help those who are suffering be able to get the help that they needed and to talk about their own story. i wanted to be an example of someone who looked like they are leading a successful life.

i am leading a successful life, alright. [laughter] i wanted to be that example for people. i know you know what i mean. so they could see that they too to get the treatment they get help and lead a successful life. and i also want to help change prevailing attitudes about the stigma associated with mental health. that has got to go, just has to go. i just don't like that. i know you don't either. [applause] so, i really want to thank you all of you for your commitment to the issue and it could not be more important. i know that if somebody has something going on in their family, in the workplace, in their neighborhood and it is an issue, a mental health issue there is nothing more, there's nothing more potentially painful, nothing more potentially hopeful and they

need all the help and support, the research, all the programs, they need a government that cares, they need a society that cares, they need neighbors that care and they need the kind of love and support that we give to anyone who has any kind of an illness. that is my great hope and i know is yours to so please do all the good you can do today and every day. thank you so much. [applause] [applause] >> thank you tipper, that was terrific. you know, healthcare of portability, accessibility and quality are key components of the national discussion right

now and are going to be key elements in terms of our conference. and the way we come to understand and frame issues increasingly involves scientific polling, understanding how people are thinking about what is happening. we are lucky today that we are joined by national leaders, who do this as a profession, understand, capture, develop messages, move public opinion. bob boorstin is going to moderate the panel this morning. bob was in the clinton white house as well, was about his mental health problems and provided an extraordinary leadership with regard to that. he has more than 25 years of experience in political communications, national security, public opinion, research in journalism and is now working for a small internet startup company called, this odd

name, google. michael blumfield is the managing director of the milan group polling in market research firm. its clients include elected officials across the country. fortune 500 companies and some of the leading public-interest groups. in the political sphere michael has established a reputation for helping democrats take back republican seats, even in so-called red states. lisa davis, currently serves as the director naa arby's divided we fail, a fantastic campaign is add to probably have seen a lot during the 2008 election cycle and his focus is to demand solutions from congressional members and businesses, civic leaders on the issues of healthcare and lifetime financial security for all. and rounding out their-- the national political and public affairs survey research firm that has completed more than

4 million interviews. i don't think bill has done that himself but the firm has done that with voters and consumers in all 50 states and a dozen foreign countries. called by "the new york times" the reading republican pollster, a polling company, public opinion, strategy, represents 19 u.s. senators, eight governors and over 50 members of congress go with you all join us up here, and bob will organize this group and do the session. thank you. [applause] >> good morning. can you hear this mic? is it working alright in the back there? no?

sorry. is that better now? okay, good. good morning. the one thing i promise you as i will not be able to arrange this unruly group. i think that they will have their own debate and i will sit quietly by. on behalf of all bust thank you to mha for having us here go before we began that wanted to thank the people who put together last night's dinner which was truly tremendous. [applause] and, i also wanted to say, having listened to tipper speak this morning and having worked with your extensively during the clinton administration, that i for one never get tired of applauding her for her work, and i am consistently amazed at her commitment to this cause and i

thank you personally for what you do. [applause] so, this is the opening session, which is good and bad. we hope to be coherent and brief. if we are not come up please stand up and tell us that we are not being that and nonetheless i hope you are all properly caffeinate it out there. i see plenty of coffee on the table. the goals of our session today are i think three. the first is to explore what americans think about healthcare and particularly in the context of the 2008 election. second, to discuss how those views may be shaping the healthcare reform debate today, and finally, i hope to get free advice out of all of these people for you. normally the chair jed great deal of money. [laughter] about what a message should mean on mental-health as you are approaching the healthcare debate.

so i am going to start with bill. the reason i'm going to start with bill is once upon a time we used to be partners in bipartisan surveys when i was that a firm that did research. second, because he has been up the long this. built 66:00 flight from boston to be here so we can blame his staff for poor scheduling. bill, we know that healthcare is a critical issue in the campaign as it has been in the last several presidential campaigns but let's try to up front get some specificity into this. what the voters really want the candidates to talk about? did they want to talk about cost? did they want to discuss covering the uninsured? what did your polling shown what did you discover? >> i think in 2008 in today if you get people to describe their own healthcare in what their concerns are the number one is out of pocket costs.

when people talk about the cost of healthcare what they mean is what they play out of pocket. most folks, hopefully once every generation, it is a terrible economy. it is making healthcare costs really powerful. certainly, asking people what are the one it to things when you talk about your concern with their own economic situation? what is it that you are most concerned about? they talk about their healthcare costs and i think president obama will, is doing the right thing because we give people this list the the long battery and we say what is the one thing that the president and congress could do that would do the most to help fix the economy? what they say is drive healthcare costs down. having said all that in terms of the issue of the uninsured that is where we have seen a difference compared to 2008, were because because of the democrat and the president's commitment to increase coverage, there are more people who are

talking about coverage as a concern but i think the president, and you concede those remarks in green bay, the president's remarks clearly linked the economic recovery to the need for healthcare change. so come on i think those are things that he is doing relatively jointly. i would just say that we rebrand this last election in 2008 what you need. president obama's campaign approaching 800, $2 billion, no public financing. vespa intuitive and $50 million on tv. 100 million was devoted to attacking john mccain for saying, john mccain's proposal included taxing health benefits as part of a tax credit exchange and they spent $100 million attacking the idea that this would be the first time we taxed health benefits, so like everyone else you got a trillion dollar plan that is being discussed. you have got to have huge chunks

of money so there is movement in the senate at least to consider taxing health benefits at some level and you find ways in which campaigns can strengthen policy because they think it would be offered for the administrations having spent that money and made that marker not to tax health benefits. it will lease costs some momentary pause to do that and i think in that way, the campaign becomes, becomes now an issue as to think about where we are in policies so i think that is another consequence of the 2008 campaign as we look forward to today's policy discussion. >> did i detect a note of jealousy or in the wind you were talking about $800 million? >> it was clearly in the. i tell people, i join the republican party in the late '70s and i said it was like the ten commandments. one of them said, you will have more money, so running a campaign where you are getting

your head begin by these enormous margins, i was very bitter, gelles, and the. [laughter] >> if it makes you feel better bob and i worked as democrats for 30 years, where that was the commandment, always have less money. >> i thought it was set in stone, i thought it was carved, so yeah i was very bitter. [laughter] >> michael one of you give us a perspective from the other side of the aisle as you were mentioning you have also done work for health insurers and people like that so you have a broader perspective, as does bill through his work. give us an example of a healthcare message that worked during the campaign or one that didn't work and why? >> it is interesting, healthcare and let me go from what bill was talking about, how much was that? 100 out of the 8 billion on healthcare. if you look at those debts, and everyone says obama, that was one of the things this bill said, put down a marker not just on that issue but on healthcare.

there wasn't a lot in a ads. there was long position papers, which i'm guessing people in this room may have read but i'm not sure the american public was focused on every little.in the position papers. they were all on the web site, all public it if you look of the ads they were using health care to advance general themes. i which is reviewing them, looking back to the scripps. one, to extremes, that is what it was called. it was on the most one extreme that want to set up a government run healthcare plan and another that wanted tax benefits so was liberals and conservatives. obama was going to reform healthcare by going down the middle. a general theme, saying he is not going to do something you don't like and putting him as a moderate. another one is the wall street crisis erupted in the fall was on the regulation. mccain was going to be with the insurers and big business and everybody else in started talking about deregulation a word not use that much in the

healthcare debate. it is not part of the parlance but it hacked into wall street. there was a guy back in the fall, the big debate about how many houses the hatem bill might remember that number as well but he was going on to that and lastly there was a specific about taxes. almost every healthcare reform proposal, you can test whether it is in focus groups just looking at getting a group of eight or ten people together, hearing how they react toward doing it a statistically valid way or some of these couples on the internet, and not always so statistically valid but the one proposal people don't like is taxing benefits. it is because a lot of the healthcare debate, and that will put this says that the mikan pick up later, the idea of what looms large as of the potential gains, the potential losses. if you say we are going to cut costs, they say that is something i like. i understand you are taxing something i'm getting and you

say it is going to help overall on healthcare costs lord is going to help the overall on the deficit or help overall in a new government plan for gall they know is the losses appear very immediate. the gains harder to understand. cell healthcare was used as a big issue in the obama campaign and almost every democrat. it was education in state races, not so much in federal but jobs in the economy. lastly, healthcare. those three things for the entire campaign for of the democrats last cycle and actually in state races i would say other than for national security does not emerge probably for the last ten or 20 years, the same thing. >> i was going to say in the war room in little rock the poster said is the economy stupid and underneath that said, and don't forget healthcare. [laughter] lisa, you work for one of the most powerful lobbies/groups in the country. a group i might add the sade me

$80 on a rental car a couple of weeks ago. [laughter] >> you may dep your membership fee. >> i have already made up my membership fees for the first five years. lest you you were charged with running the divided we fail campaign for the aarp and in raising this issue of healthcare from a third party perspective, what you tell us a bit about that and i know you brought a couple of the ads you folks ran so we can take a look at those as well. >> in the fall to doesn't six we started talking, we knew our nation needed to deal with healthcare and we also saw healthcare is inextricably linked to financial security. so we decided to devise a campaign that would engage the public not just our members, but people of all generations in ways that aarp had before, working with what we call their strange bedfellows partners, a business, business roundtable and labor and the goal was to use the historic 2008 elections

as a frame for driving healthcare financial security to the top of the issue agenda. no matter who the nominees for and no matter who the eventual president was. so we put together a campaign. we did a great deal of message testing about how to talk about the issues and in everything that you have heard so far it's exactly what we learned, and one thing that was incredibly hard for those of us that come from a policy background and race aarp generally was to find of the public didn't want to become subject matter experts and that the facts and figures were not compelling. they looked at healthcare, financial security through a very personal lynn said they were very worried about healthcare. back in the fall of 2006 eight out of ten american saw healthcare is their right. but the lens that they used was not worrying about the 47 million folks without insurance. it was a very visceral and poppell fear that even those

with insurance had that their healthcare costs would soon become so great that it would lead to financial ruin or that they could lose their jobs, their insurance because so, we kind of did a change in how we thought about things and wind up talking to people in terms that really resonated. one of the fundamental principles of our campaign was to not go forthwith aarp preferred policy specifics but instead to press the candidates for both a commitment to action as well as their specifics on how they would fix things. we wanted to be even-handed and balance, have a strong message about the need to put aside partisanship and gridlock and come up with solutions that could be supported by the american public. part of their campaign was to take this message research and the 1.6 million petitions that we had, the hundreds of thousands of other people we had engaged and get inside the campaign bubble to show the candidates these issues were the public expected them to be party

and continue to tap into the public's concern about these issues and direct them back to washington. so, i have to at going to show. the first one is part of an ad campaign called average americans. these are personal stories all of which are true of individuals, most of them had insurance who were forced into bankruptcy due to their high out of pocket costs and they are heartbreaking. if you want to play it, david. >> i was at my father's wedding and i was having severe pain. the next morning i was rushed to the er. i had no idea how expensive the bills would be. they just kept coming and coming. i have health insurance and they barely covered-- it was like getting a medical coupon. i am embarrassed that i had to declare bankruptcy. it can happen to anybody. i guess that is the story.

everyone should know something needs to be done about it. >> so, using the power of a personal story which the still a theme for divided we fail in the way we communicate, helps personalize these issues are more than all of the compellance statistics that are out there. another tranche of our advertising was focused on really demonstrating to the candidates the public demand for action that was out there and signaling to them that while aarp is strictly nonpartisan then very even-handed we would hold them accountable at the end of the day for their commitment to taking action. this ad, which we call candidates took a really long time to make because we are so strickling nonpartisan. we spent a lot of time making sure we have quotas and clips of both senator obama and senator mccain that did not apply any favoritism. they are on the air for the tax same amount of time and boesch showed very positively. you have no idea how difficult that was to put together.

[laughter] >> we want a system of healthcare in which everyone can afford-- >> i put forward a series of proposals that will foster economic growth. >> to keep families in their homes and businesses-- >> we can't wait to fix our healthcare system-- >> we are approaching-- >> we have a chance to fix small problems that we have been talking about year after year. >> call and be sure that top turns into solutions. aarp is responsible for the content of this advertising. >> okay. i think one of the interesting things here and i would like to get bill and michael's reaction is the idea of using personal stories because the folks in this room or these two rooms or whenever they are, though very well that those personal stories are generally what drives people into the mental health advocacy

field. what is your reaction to that end? >> i thought they were fabulous. i thought they were incredibly powerful and the people they had on camera are really powerful. again, i don't want to be glib, but what i tell people in terms of communicating, i tell people there's a reason that jesus told stories. the human brain has been hardwired to remember people and stories and there's a reason those parables' are powerful. we talk about them to a dozen years later because we connect with people and what i picked elected officials to do it is to stop talking about hundreds of billions of this in trillions of this and hundreds of thousands of this until powerful stories that make the point. frequently when i speak i do the same thing. i tell stories and jokes and you see people like couple of years later, the raid bamford my stories and jokes. and clearly in healthcare,

healthcare, and that by the way is a policy area. it is one of the things them one of the reasons we have had two or three generations of failure, because it is not something that affects someone else. everyone in this room is intimately connected to our healthcare system and they have extraordinary personal concerns about what happens and it becomes incredibly difficult to negotiate. in by the way, the people who are on the far different side from the president, what did they have on the air right now? what they have are patient's and candidate in england talk about the horrible failed system and how they would have been killed if they wouldn't have come to america for healthcare. they are taking the same approach to telling a very different stories so in terms of communicating, as they said there is a successful-- we have one of the most successful models and that is the power of the spareable story to capture attention and to move people. >> definitely stories always worked best.

i agree with that but it's interesting when you think of those ads, it shows sort of how far we have come and how far we have to go. one hand, and lisa, what lease is doing is an example of what i said, healthcare, everyone is talking about we need reform. it is one reason it is not used except on the tax issue by crescent or senator obama when he was campaigning for most of the ones i was working with, you ought to get something or you require to campaign. yacked to say there is a contrast, so if you are saying divided we fail message we want reform healthcare, and your opponent is saying is we ought to make changes in healthcare, you are not getting any traction on the difference though to some extent divided we fail to some of the oxygen out of the room to talk about healthcare is the defining issue. we wanted to put it in the holy trinity but it wasn't something except on the tax issue or key

to good as an example of something else we could always frame and i am speaking from a democratic perspective here, the republican is bad, a democrat is good. now, what that means is, we got everybody in the country now who says there's that to be something done about healthcare. the babb thing is the lack of specificity in the campaign ads, and a lot of the issue push on this. our way to go from everyone saying we have got to do something about it to what those details are in when they start to focus it because as lee says said people don't want to be policymakers. i would go further that they just aren't even following this debate that closely. they follow stories here and there and again it is stories. ecat some person getting a payoff from the insurance industry, they might know about the corruption but the idea of what they are talking about single-payer rick calm coin the public plan first of this sort of