Chuck Smith-Dewey is an author, designer and cartoonist. He founded healthinsurance.org in 1994 as the result of personal experience with the difficulty that self-employed with pre-existing conditions have with finding and keeping affordable health insurance. He’s since added a site for Medicare, medicareresources.org, and two sites that help voters determine how their representatives votes on health reform, healthreformvotes.org and medicarevotes.org.
He worked his way through college at Minnesota State University Moorhead producing regional tourism publications and producing fliers for local political candidates. Prior to founding healthinsurance.org, Smith-Dewey worked as the publications director and sports information director at the College of St. Benedict, a Catholic women’s college in central Minnesota, as well as in a variety of positions for an association management company, explaining benefits to members. An early tech adopter, he created one of the Internet’s early yellow pages services.
Writing under the pseudonym “Uncle Hyggly” he has written and illustrated several regional folk stories including the perennial favorite “Mr. Gonopolis And His 12 Holstein – A Christmas Story.” He self-published four titles under the banner of Wounded Coot Greetings, “for when you don’t quite care enough, to send the very best,” an homage to Hallmark where early in his career he had someday hoped to work.
Smith-Dewey is also the founder of pounce, a graphic design firm in the Twin Cities.
Smith-Dewey serves on the board of directors for Healthcare for All – Minnesota and To Be Fair, the non-profit that publishes Tarbell.org.