A few of Herndon's target populations include voters, people of color, red states, skeptical audiences, and you'll love this one -- Elevator Language with a list of succinct scripts to use based on the person you're speaking to during the ride. You must check out Herndon's website and read the many instructions of what to say and what not to say. You'll either get very annoyed or laugh yourself silly.
Here are some examples of Herndon spin regarding the ACA:
-- Use "family values" when talking to the public about the expansion of Medicaid. Is estate recovery a family value?
-- When talking about the ACA's required Accountable Care Organization (ACO) model that will pay doctors according to patient outcomes and reward them for savings they achieve, Herndon says to call this "Coordinated Patient Care" and "do not connect pricing with rewards or incentives for doctors" or "with lump-sum payments for medical care" and do not mention "payment based on positive patient outcomes." Why not? The three do-nots are how ACOs work. (ACOs are described in topic 9.
-- Here's an award winner: "Members of Congress will purchase their insurance at the Exchange. If members of Congress are part of the marketplace then it's got to offer quality plans and protections."
-- Stressing that under the ACA insurers won't be able to deny coverage for pre-existing diseases is a Herndon biggie. In fact, you heard this many times over from Mr. Obama and other politicians. But a loophole in the law allows insurers to rescind (cancel) your policy if you intentionally put false or incomplete information on your application. The ACA says you must be given at least 30 days' notice before your coverage can be rescinded, giving you time to appeal the decision or find new coverage. So, if your care becomes costly for the insurer and you didn't mention you had a rash on your arm when you were 15, that'll work. How can you prove if leaving this out was intentional or not? It's them against you.
Enroll America's Best Practices Institute is publishing a series of briefs on the best way to write and design websites and marketing materials, no doubt, using Herndon messaging. PR and marketing firms are helping various state Exchanges come up with appealing branding such as using a name everyone will like and spiffy logos with cool type styles in colors that will appeal to all audiences. Branding lessons include advising Exchanges which words to "embrace' such as emphasizing choice, control, transparency and competition. Other messaging includes, "the Exchange should be viewed as an educator, not an enforcer" and using the word "marketplace' instead of Exchange is a must. Tennessee Health Care Campaign will be telling potential customers ". . . the exchange offers us more choices, greater control over our health care, and more competition to control costs." It's all Herndon's handywork in one form or another.
More choice means choice of insurance companies, not choice of doctors and hospitals. In rural areas, there may be only one insurer offering plans which means one network and doctors may not be taking new patients. This happened in MA under Romneycare, and on top of that, many doctors would not accept people in the subsidized plans because of time-consuming red tape and low reimbursement rates. Under the ACA, insurers are planning to limit networks in the cheaper plans at the Exchanges. Having too few doctors in a network is a means of suppressing the use of health care which increases an insurer's profits. Further on in this lesson, you'll learn that the Maryland Exchange has been advised to ignore negative problems such as not enough doctors to serve the newly insured.
Choice is definitely a non starter for people found eligible for Medicaid -- the ACA allows no other choice for this segment of the population and many doctors do not accept Medicaid. As for giving you greater control, considering all the rules about income and FPL, not to mention the data-mining to monitor your income during the year and those nasty tax credit paybacks, it's you who is being controlled. And competition? Read this stunning op-ed by Nomi Prins: "Real Danger of "Obamacare" Insurance Company Takeover of Health Care."
In Enroll America's January 15, 2013 press release, Executive Director Rachel Klein says the ACA offers the promise of "access to comprehensive, affordable health coverage." That is a false promise. As you learned in this lesson, coverage in the plans that will be offered at the Exchanges, with the exception of the two most expensive, is anything but comprehensive -- the cheaper plans are unaffordable to use. Furthermore, how can she claim that the cost of the plans are affordable? Ms. Klein should be well aware of the nationwide survey Enroll America commissioned in which the majority of people polled said that the plans are too expensive.
Currently PR firms are working with some state Exchanges to develop effective communications plans and advertising campaigns. Names include Mintz & Hoke, Hill & Company Communications and Weber Shandwick just to name a few. Ask the Massachusetts Health Insurance Connector -- the prototype of an Exchange in the land of Romneycare -- how much it spent on PR contracts over the years. In 2007, board members signed off on a two-year contract with Weber Shandwick for $1.85 million the first year with nearly $3 million for advertising -- commission on media buys not included. And, by the way, the MA Connector upper management boasts six-figure salaries. Former MA Connector Executive Director Jon Kingsdale's salary in 2007 was $225,000 and increased in 2008 to $231,750. In 2007, Deputy Director Rosemary Day alternated between a four-day and five-day work week to the tune of $175,000. These are only two examples of the many high-flying salaries at the MA Connector, an operation run by politicians and unelected political appointees and influenced by executives from the private insurance industry.
Add up pay scales like that for every Exchange in the country, throw in some bennies, a PR contract for each Exchange, campaign costs and compensation paid by Exchanges to Navigators for plans they sell -- a grand and costly effort to push more people into America's for-profit health care system. Your tax dollars at work and mega bucks that could be used for actual hands-on medical care.
The Maryland Exchange has three campaign funding levels -- Basic, Plus and Full-Scale -- with a total for year one, two and three. Basic funding for year one is $2,450,000, Plus is $4,000,000 and Full-Scale is $6,300,000. See p.137 at this link for years two and three.
The following, from the maryland link above, gives you an idea of some of the strategies that will be in play, most likely in all states. The Maryland Exchange has been advised by Weber Shandwick to "establish a system to monitor newspaper, radio, TV and online conversations about the Exchange and the program and to establish procedures and priorities for responding to negative media stories, op-eds, blogs and reports." You can find this in the Risk Management and Responses section of Maryland's strategic marketing plan.
In the Earned Media/Public Relations section, advice includes " . . . putting out stories on the first effective enrollees, enrollment number milestones, and enrollee testimonials. Each of these becomes the focus for positive, brand-reinforcing stories. There will also be the risk of negative stories, including potential topics such as enrollment snafus, delays in issuing insurance cards, the cost of Qualified Health Plans [government-approved plans], claims of "shoddy' Bronze coverage, incidents of physicians refusing to accept enough new patients to serve the uninsured and other negative topics." "While coverage is bound to include some level of criticism it can be success- fully countered by putting a human face on heatlh reform."
The Social and Digital Media section advises an invasion of the Internet including social media to market health insurance by "delivering the right messages to the right audience at the right time," (probably using Herndon spin) to "help drive enrollment in the Exchange," and also flooding newspapers with op-eds to contradict reported adverse effects of the ACA.
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