A sick child is held in her mother’s arms as they sit in a crowded emergency room awaiting medical attention.
The screen then cuts to black with a supered message in white, which reads, “Emergency room wait times are getting longer.”
Back to live action where a couple is seated in a car, the male holding a lengthy bill full of charges for medical treatment. You can see from their expressions that the invoice looms large in their minds, making for a precarious financial situation.
An intervening supered message against a black backdrop reads, “Health care costs cause half of California’s bankruptcies.”
Next we see a man on the phone listening to an automated message informing him that he will have to stay on hold for 40 minutes before he can get the necessary medical authorization he needs.
A supered message then reads, “Californians are waiting for health care reform.”
This is followed by a supered rhetorical question, which asks, “What are California’s leaders waiting for?”
An end tag identifies spot’s sponsor, The California Endowment, accompanied by a website address, www.CaHealthReform.org.
Raymond Bark of Santa Monica-based GARTNER directed “Waiting” for public advocacy agency GMMB, Los Angeles. GMMB’s client The California Endowment is looking to generate public momentum for much needed health care reform in the Golden State for both the insured and uninsured.
The GMMB creative team included partner Steve Caplan, copywriter Aimee Sanders Freund, art director Jennifer Harfeld and producer Andrew Silver.
Don Block and Rich Carter executive produced for GARTNER, with Greg Ferguson serving as producer. The DP was Marco Mazzei.
Editor was Adrienne Gits of Rival Editorial, Santa Monica.
Supreme Court Seems Likely To Uphold A Law That Could Force TikTok To Shut Down On Jan. 19
The Supreme Court on Friday seemed likely to uphold a law that would ban TikTok in the United States beginning Jan. 19 unless the popular social media program is sold by its China-based parent company.
Hearing arguments in a momentous clash of free speech and national security concerns, the justices seemed persuaded by arguments that the national security threat posed by the company's connections to China override concerns about restricting the speech either of TikTok or its 170 million users in the United States.
Early in arguments that lasted more than two and a half hours, Chief Justice John Roberts identified his main concern: TikTok's ownership by China-based ByteDance and the parent company's requirement to cooperate with the Chinese government's intelligence operations.
If left in place, the law passed by bipartisan majorities in Congress and signed by President Joe Biden in April will require TikTok to "go dark" on Jan. 19, lawyer Noel Francisco told the justices on behalf of TikTok.
At the very least, Francisco urged, the justices should enter a temporary pause that would allow TikTok to keep operating. "We might be in a different world again" after President-elect Donald Trump takes office on Jan. 20. Trump, who has 14.7 million followers on TikTok, also has called for the deadline to be pushed back to give him time to negotiate a "political resolution." Francisco served as Trump's solicitor general in his first presidential term.
But it was not clear whether any justices would choose such a course. And only Justice Neil Gorsuch sounded like he would side with TikTok to find that the ban violates the Constitution.
Gorsuch labeled arguments advanced by the Biden administration' in defense of the law a... Read More