The Affordable Care Act (ACA) was officially rolled out via
healthcare.gov on October 1, 2013. Its launch came with a bevy of technical
issues, inviting criticism from many ACA opponents and healthcare consumers. The
ACA, also known as Obamacare, has received its fair share of criticism from its
inception, and the botched rollout of the online healthcare site did not help matters.
The technical issues users experienced were originally
blamed on heavy traffic flow, but the causes ended up being much deeper. The
administration has yet to directly assign cause to all of the actual technical
issues that are making the site difficult for people to use, likely because
they do not know what all of the problems are yet. The administration has
launched a “tech surge” team to assess and address the technical issues, and it
is now estimated that the site will be up and running successfully by
mid-November.
For such an important initiative, many Americans are
wondering why the site was never rigorously tested before going live. Further
criticism reveals that the glitches users have been experiences breeds a low
trust level when it comes to the security of the site. People are entering
important personal information, it is crucial that the site be seen as safe and
secure. The problems have also made the process confusing for users, the very
thing that Obamacare was supposed to eradicate.
President Obama recently spoke to the public and apologized
for the issues with the ACA’s official launch. During the speech, he gave the
1-800 number people could call if they were having problems while on the site. The
idea seemed to be to vaguely address the issue, and provide contact information
for people who need help until the site launched again. Still, many critics
maintain that Obama does not seem to be doing enough to fix the problem.
A couple of PR expert s, Ben Boyd and Greg Jenkins, spoke to
NPR on how they would recommend overhauling the Obamacare message as a result
of recent events. Excellent suggestions included focusing on success stories
from families who have benefitted already from the ACA, the President taking
responsibility and showing himself as integrally involved in solving the
problem, and embracing “hyper-transparency”. Given what we have learned in
class thus far and the importance of this new initiative, what other advice
would you offer to those steering the messaging for the ACA launch both now,
and when it re-launches in mid-November?
As for now, I would write a message focused on how the administration takes the issue seriously and is putting all efforts into getting it fixed; which is essentially what their doing. Since I don't have TV, I imagine commercials showing concerned, focused individuals staring at a computer screen while busily typing and clicking away, while a voice over talks about lessons learned and taking the situation seriously to prepare for the re-launch. Family would have to be mentioned, of course, probably showing official looking people talking to families with concerned and empathetic expressions.
ReplyDeleteAs for the re-launch, the message just needs to be focused on how simple and easy it is/has become. Maybe mention how the first launch was essential to the testing process, but that could be a slippery slope.