She is just one of hundreds of digital placemarks inside a Google map of Pittsburgh on Barack Obama's Web site, but dig further and Overbrook's Kathleen Lane has a compelling story to tell about the state of American health care.

At least Mr. Obama hopes so.

The 63-year-old has a retirement-age husband forced to keep working 5,000 miles away to keep his health benefits. She has parents in their 80s who survive on supplemental health care funded by Mrs. Lane and her siblings. Her youngest daughter traveled to Thailand to get transgender surgery not covered by her private insurance carrier (though the elective procedure was covered in government plans in her native Oregon).

Mrs. Lane is one of hundreds of thousands of Obama supporters nationwide who has written up their health care horror stories after the president's campaign arm, called Organizing for America, asked for submissions this spring. The story collection is part of grass-roots efforts to build momentum for health care reform, using the same kind of technological outreach -- including a 13 million-member e-mail list -- that proved so mighty in the Democrat's presidential campaign last year.

The campaign issued an e-mail from Vice President Joe Biden last weekend pushing for more entries.

"For folks who don't yet understand why health care reform is such an urgent priority, these stories make the case far better than any statistics ever could," it said. The stories are grouped together on simple Google maps that allow readers to search by city, in an effort to build community-based support.

Mrs. Lane, 63, a retired community development expert and Obama campaign volunteer last year, said she jumped at the chance to help.

Health care woes "are not uncommon. I talk to people from all over and I sent [the story request] to everyone I know," Mrs. Lane said in an interview. "This is pretty much the status quo across the country. We're the only first world country that has this issue."

Mr. Obama kept up the tech-based organizing yesterday, holding an hour-long online town hall meeting on health care that took questions via YouTube videos, Facebook and Twitter chats, and live questions from a northern Virginia audience.

The president denied claims from opponents that he supports a government takeover of health care and told supporters the nation needs "to stop clinging to a broken system that doesn't work, and we've got to have the courage to reach out for a future that's going to be better for our children and our grandchildren."

The Republican National Committee responded in kind, hosting its own live chat during Mr. Obama's meeting. "Obama says our economy is in crisis because of health care costs. But his government-run plan will make it even worse, putting our country further into debt," the RNC moderator, deputy research editor Matt Moon, wrote yesterday.

Other critics have taken notice of the president's strategy. Patients United Now, a branch of the conservative Americans for Prosperity Foundation, has been assembling its own set of health care horror stories, often from people who have had bad experiences with government-run health plans. That could have been overseas, or with the red tape at Veterans Health Administration hospitals in the U.S.

Another group called Conservatives for Patients' Rights has assembled its own videos from government health care "victims" and funded advertisements attacking Mr. Obama's initiatives. Patients United Now spent $1.5 million on ads urging swing-state Democratic senators to vote down any reforms that included government-run insurance plans.

Mr. Obama's organizing arm has issued its own video diaries of the health care stories, called nationwide rallies in early June and last Saturday hosted a nationwide health care volunteer day. It will soon start regular Wednesday phone banks across Pennsylvania as well as door-to-door canvassing on health care issues, said Elizabeth Lucas, Organizing for America's state director.

The efforts will be a major test of whether Mr. Obama's political infrastructure can also deliver votes on Capitol Hill on his leading domestic policy issue. The number of health care stories posted to Mr. Obama's site -- at http://stories.barackobama.com/healthcare -- signal that the issue has real bipartisan support, argued Ms. Lucas, formerly the Obama campaign's get-out-the-vote director for Florida's Gulf Coast.

"It isn't a Democratic issue, a Republican issue or an independent issue. This is people talking to their neighbors who are suffering. ... These are issues affecting everyone. They know how it's affecting their paycheck, they know how it's affecting the people who are losing their jobs," she said.

A Democratic National Committee spokesman could not give exact numbers on how many stories were submitted, saying there have been hundreds of thousands nationwide and tens of thousands across Pennsylvania.

Mr. Obama told supporters in an e-mail in May that the stories have a special appeal to him, noting that his mother died of ovarian cancer while worrying over her health care coverage.

"I know personal stories can drive that change, because I know how my mother's experience continues to drive me," he wrote.

Karen Cassela, 49, a New Castle postal worker and Obama campaign volunteer, was motivated to write after getting one of the campaign's e-mail blasts. She worries about getting coverage for her three children, such as daughter Leah, who had none after graduating from Duquesne University last year.

"I pray that she doesn't have any serious health issues until she is able to obtain coverage. Lindsay, 21, will be in the same situation when she graduates next year and she has epilepsy," Mrs. Cassela wrote. "Young adults around the country are faced with this dilemma. I feel that the needs of young adults are not being met."

Dan Evans, 42, a self-employed writer from Dormont, wrote about how he can only afford health insurance for his wife and two young boys. He only pays for life insurance for himself. "I'm the sole source of income for the precious people inside these walls, and I'm playing this game without a net," he wrote.

An Obama volunteer like the other Pittsburgh-area writers, he was mildly surprised that the pleas for help have kept coming, eight months after the presidential campaign finished.

"When you sign up with Obama you don't just get a campaign button," he said.