Winning Health Care Ad Maker Eric Hurt's Creative Range

Organizing for America Tuesday announced the winner of the Health Reform Video Challenge contest the Democratic Party conducted to choose an ad that will focus attention on the health care debate before Congress. The president's message arm plans to air the winning selection nationally in the next few weeks to show voters "that our supporters' creativity and passion is more than a match for the slick ads and partisan spin doctors on the other side." After screening nearly 1,000 submissions and winnowing to the best of 20 finalists, the judges at barackobama.com have chosen a short film titled "I Deserve Health Care."

The Charlottesville Daily Progress recently reported that the ad's casting director, Erica Arvold, and Charlottesville, Va., filmmaker and director Eric Hurt entered two submissions. The winning TV commercial's pointed and poignant message is that America's uninsured children are not simply a statistic but 8 million individual boys and girls, whose families do not qualify for or cannot afford health insurance -- many of whom will become catastrophically sick in the near future to tragic results. The powerful and direct video includes a little girl telling the camera, "Two years from now, I'll be diagnosed with leukemia and I'll die because my family couldn't afford health insurance." Click play below to watch the winning video:


The OFA has not released Hurt's other entry to the public but I'm guessing it was not the humorous but slightly outré short film titled "So Stoned" that the winning filmmaker has featured on his Vimeo account. As of this writing the 7 minute and 23 second video remains posted but I wouldn't be surprised if political consultant David Plouffe, whose e-mail announced Hurt's selection to the mybarackobama listserv, persuaded the lucky contestant to remove the link featuring 5 chemically affected buddies passing a bong while sharing increasingly more disgusting stories demonstrating questionable judgment during high times in their past.