Governor George Pataki’s threats to health care in his 2006-07 budget proposal were turned back by a powerful TV and radio ad campaign conceived by Josh Isay and Micah Lasher of Knickerbocker/SKD and executed in collaboration with EpandMedia’s creative director Len Epand. One heart-wrenching TV commercial (“Nurse Gilmartin”) features a nurse in a Neonatal Intensive Care Unit, attributing the survival of numerous premature babies to the existence of such facilities jeopardized by Pataki’s budget cuts.
The radio ads, “Ouch” and “Joke’s Over,” emphasized the devastation the proposed budget cuts would wreak on New York’s elderly and disabled. Produced by Len Epand, the campaign was commissioned by the Health Care Education Project (the Greater New York Hospital Association and 1199 SEIU United Healthcare Workers). The ads succeeded in convincing the Governor to restore those funds necessary to sustain health care in New York State