Tips on getting an op-ed published?
My wife and I are having a baby just 1.5 months from now (hooray!). And our insurance provider, Anthem Blue Cross, is cutting coverage to our local hospital network and maternity services in 10 days (boooo!). The entire process of finding out about this (via the news, not our insurance or the hospital) and getting continued coverage has been an absolute nightmare. We jumped the hoops, sent in all the required paperwork, and even got the billing department at the hospital involved. We're still only covered if we happen to be lucky enough that the doctor who is named on the continued coverage agreement happens to be on call at the time of delivery, otherwise it'll be out of pocket to the tune of $10,000 of dollars. At this point it feels like we're betting it all on red.
The response to the United Healthcare shooting illustrated just how frustrated people of the US are in their healthcare system and I'd like to do my part to continue to keep that topic front of mind in the American psyche. I've written up a little op-ed on our experience and I was wonder if any Tilderinos have managed to get one published before. Any insight would be very welcome.
I've actually had the best luck just straight up calling the local paper and talking to a human person. Sometimes on weekends they have an especially slow time and looking for local things to publish. Call up TV stations and local radio as well if you want to try, you never know if they're looking for a human interest column. And don't forget your local family support groups, and fertility clinics; they might want to include your op ed in their newsletters.
They know precisely well that's not how any of this works. Anyway good luck on Red, and congratulations again ! Three or two more weeks to 37?
That really sucks man, I'm sorry to hear that. I'm always flabbergasted (more so than usual) at how abysmal the prospect of having a child in the US seems unless you're rich or have great insurance.
For op-ed my recommendation would be try to find a smaller, more local paper? I'm assuming you're thinking of a larger paper, which seems pretty hard to get published in? I know my local paper seems to publish letters pretty frequently from people I know because it's very small and I don't think they get a lot of submissions.