by Marcia Rhodes | Jun 7, 2017 | Blog
“Story telling is the oldest form of teaching,” Matt Cavallo declared when we met on May 23. I couldn’t agree more. Great story telling has always intrigued me. Maybe that’s why I’m in PR. I have always believed that behind every organization is a zealous individual with an epic story waiting to be shared. It’s usually the CEO or founder, though not always.
Matt is a passionate patient advocate who dedicates his life to the fight against multiple sclerosis. He has been named among the top 10 Social HealthMakers by WCG and his blog was selected as one of Healthline’s top multiple sclerosis picks in 2015. His story of being diagnosed and overcoming the physical and emotional challenges associated with having a chronic disease can be read in his memoir, The Dog Story: A Journey into a New Life with Multiple Sclerosis.
What started as a simple half-hour meet-and-greet with Amendola Communications agency staff turned into a 90-minute conversation. Who has that kind of time, you ask? Well, Matt knew how to keep our attention: he had us laughing one moment and fighting back tears the next. It’s a skill few people have but many aspire to. This ability to connect comes in really handy during media interviews at large trade shows (such as HIMSS) where our PR clients (health IT vendors) get to pitch their product or solution to editors who decide on the spot whether they care enough to write about them or not.
GetWellNetwork founder and CEO Michael O’Neil was diagnosed with non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma at the age of 28. While the medical outcome was excellent, the patient experience was challenging. After four cycles of chemotherapy, he started GetWellNetwork to help hospitals improve performance and outcomes through patient engagement. Michael and his team work tirelessly to ensure the voice of the patient is heard. Today, more than 4.6 million patients use GetWellNetwork technology to engage in their healthcare. Take a minute to watch Michael tell his story in this short video.
Growing up in a family of doctors, ClearDATA CEO Darin Brannan got a firsthand look at the challenges healthcare practitioners face in treating patients using paper and outdated technology. It made him painfully aware of the number of people who die each day as a result of medical errors long before it became national news.
Despite the availability of electronic health records and other technologies that were supposed to solve the problem, reports show that more than 1,000 people still die each day due to medical errors. At the center of this seeming disconnect is a lack of cohesiveness among advanced information technologies. Darin believes that, “Healthcare is less of a science problem, it’s more of an information problem.”
In 2011, he co-founded ClearDATA to apply his cloud computing expertise to healthcare in order to remove the technical obstacles inhibiting patient safety and costing lives. Today, ClearDATA is recognized by organizations such as CB Insights as a leading healthcare information security services company, with $54 million in funding and a customer portfolio that includes some of the largest healthcare providers in the nation.
Dave Bennett, EVP, Orion Health, is passionate about precision medicine. He often tells the story about his son, Carter, who has cystic fibrosis (CF). Here is how he tells it.
Carter’s story
About a decade ago, my oldest son, Carter, was diagnosed with cystic fibrosis.
Like most kids with CF, Carter had a host of physical problems, like lung infections due to mucous build-up and thrive issues due to pancreas blockage. In eighth grade his lungs needed a thorough cleaning, so he was hospitalized and homebound for three consecutive weeks with a PICC line.
Five years ago, Vertex Pharmaceuticals released a drug designed to address Carter’s specific genetic variation of CF, one that only four percent of patients have.
But when I told Carter’s doctor about it, he said it wouldn’t help Carter because he didn’t have that genetic variation.
Once I pressed the doctor to review 60 pages of Carter’s data, however, the doctor soon reversed his position.
“This is a game changer,” he said.
Now let’s be clear: Carter’s doctor is a great doctor. But he didn’t have the tools to help him analyze that 60 pages of data and connect my son to a promising new drug therapy that went on to stabilize his lung function, end his annual sinus surgeries, eliminate his regular bronchial scopes, made his ED visits a thing of the past, and allowed him to flourish into a six-foot-two-inch, 225-pound captain of his high-school football team. Today, Carter is a thriving college student, our payers don’t have to pay for all the procedures mentioned above anymore, and his mom and I don’t worry about him one bit.
That is the promise of precision medicine exemplified. But in the future, rather than rely on a highly interested advocate like a parent who’s passionate about precision medicine to provide that cognitive support, payers and providers will be able to rely on technology that synthesizes and analyzes the data (e.g., those 60 pages Carter’s doctor couldn’t effortlessly process) and utilize it in the right context at the right time.
“This is my mission,” Dave tells journalists. “I want to help doctors and patients in making decisions about what will help them. To do this work, you really need focus at the mission level, because it’s going to change healthcare for the better and make a difference in people’s lives.”
by Margaret Kelly | May 31, 2017 | Blog
In the good old days of the Internet (we’re talking the 1990s here), clients grappled with the decision to jump on the newest marketing scheme the website. Advertising and PR agencies, as well as marketing directors, had widely divergent opinions about several components that are now taken for granted.
The conversation has gone from, “Do we really need a website?” to “How can we make our website better?”
I was on a marketing team that received a MAME Award for Best Website. (The Major Achievements in Merchandising Excellence golden trophy is to the homebuilding industry what the Oscar is to Hollywood.) My employer strolled into my office and said, “Did I mention you’re going to be the guest speaker on websites at today’s Homebuilder’s Association meeting? We leave in 20 minutes.” After the shock wore off, I must have delivered an intelligent lecture because many of the builders asked me to evaluate their websites.
What surprises me today is that many of the same problems I saw with sites in 2003 still exist. Sure, with WordPress and new design trends, the hot features of today are hero images, video and animation. But in the race to beef up data capture and content marketing, simple, everyday details can easily be overlooked. Vendors and publishers alike can up their game and make it easier for their audience to engage, sign up, download, interact and purchase.
Here are 6 key areas you should evaluate on your website to ensure maximum engagement:
Contact Information
You would think contact information would be a no-brainer. But when I’m wearing my research hat, nothing makes me yell “REALLY?!” faster than wasting time hunting down basic information. Your address and phone number should be easy to find. Your “Contact Us” link should be at the top or bottom of every page. If people can’t reach you when they have questions about your event or product, they will likely move on to the next vendor on their list. Don’t be coy. Give me your 411!
Company Directories
In this digital world, time zones abound and chances are someone out there is looking at your website when you are not open for business. There are pros and cons to both popular methods of people reaching you after hours: “Contact Us” forms and Company Directories.
A contact us form (which is what we have on our own company website) can be programmed one time and simply lives on your website. Visitors can, however, be frustrated if you create a pre-populated and mandatory dropdown-list. What if the reason for contacting you isn’t on that list?
My personal favorite is Company Directories such as the one at HIMSS. It’s easy to find their staff and there’s no question who does what. But, you must keep on top of it and update it often.
Monitoring
So, you’ve got an “info@” email address posted on your website. It’s better than nothing. But who reads your incoming message? More than one person? Do you respond to every inquiry?
Whether it’s someone asking a question or providing feedback, a simple follow-up lets your audience know you’re on the ball.
And please watch the automated replies. It’s great to receive a quick email referencing my trouble ticket number. But it doesn’t make a very good impression to acknowledge you received my email and will respond shortly, and then never get back to me.
Follow up. Every. Single. Time.
Tell me thank you, let me know you’ll consider my suggestion, or forward me to the person who can really help me. Don’t leave me in the dark.
Oh, and remember to redirect the routing of your website mail if you have a change in staff.
Testing
The team members monitoring your web mail inquiries and data capture alike will know the average number of contacts you receive per month. Any sudden drop in those numbers should be a red flag.
Minor updates in website programming, firewalls and email proxy servers can all wreak havoc on your incoming messages. Test your site from time to time. Send yourself an email from the website or fill out any forms to ensure everything is still running as it should.
Social Media Platforms
Are links to your social platforms elusive? Are they current?
I’ve taken over social media duties for many clients and I am dismayed when I discover they have a LinkedIn account but no way to reach it through their website.
If you have multiple channels, make sure website visitors can reach them. By the same token, if you haven’t tweeted since 2013, it might be best to remove the little blue bird until your account is more current.
Yes, websites can be expensive to program. But a laundry list of social media platforms adds an unnecessary degree of difficulty that makes it so much harder for visitors to engage. Our eyes are now trained to look for social graphics and a text list of Twitter and Facebook will be overlooked.
A much better example is to use the icons with which everyone is familiar. No questions here on how I can engage!
But let’s not get carried away. Mashable, gotta love you, but honestly, which Twitter handle do I use when I’m trying to share an article you published?
Social Media Sharing
Publications count on social media to increase readership of their articles. Even vendor websites add sharing buttons to the side of their blogs to encourage readers to engage. What surprises me is how often a pre-programmed post opens in my Twitter profile without basic information such as a Twitter handle.
When you set up your Share buttons, be sure the website plug-in of choice includes your Twitter handle. It’s a common mistake and simple to fix. Also, Twitter doesn’t include links in the character count, but it’s still nice to provide a bit.ly (or whatever service you use) so visitors can RT and comment.
Which is, after all, what engagement is all about. To wit, here are some great examples of engagement done right:
Forbes This site could really improve by adding their Twitter handle and a shortened link, but they get kudos for adding several options of “Tweet This” above the article. Readers will be quick to click that button and get the message out.
Becker’s Hospital Review Share any of their articles on Twitter and the post starts with “Reading @beckershr” followed by the article title and the link.
Health IT Outcomes Push the Tweet Share button and the post is auto-populated with the title of the article, a shortened link, and “via @HITOutcomes.”
Politico’s Morning eHealth Not only does the Share button have all the necessary bits, but the journalists Twitter handles are displayed for even further engagement.
Sometimes it’s the little things that matter. Not only are these suggestions relatively low-cost fixes, the attention to detail will elevate your website to social success.
What suggestions do you have for making websites more social? Please share them below.
by Jenna Warner | May 24, 2017 | Blog
Grab your Instagram-worthy coffee and make sure you are not guilty of these social media crimes.
Social media marketing is fast paced. Not only does your well thought-out and carefully sliced up 140-character tweet have a short shelf life, but each platform changes almost daily. However, there are some nuances that remain the same. These are my top 5 mistakes to avoid in the ever-evolving social media game.
1. Use old, wrong or low-quality logos
Twitter’s logo is a bird, not a plane and not a weird version of tumblers “t”. The official logo became the bird with no text in 2012. No, I’m not paid by Twitter’s branding manager, but I am fired up about getting everyone on the same page about the logo misuse!
Whenever you need a social media platform’s logo, it is best to visit their branding guidelines or resources. Usually, you can download a free kit that has the logo in many colors and every type of file format.
Another important logo faux pas to watch out for is the dreaded, low-quality profile picture or thumbnail. Nothing screams “We don’t care about this” more than a bad photo as your profile picture. It’s the first impression your potential customers see and you want it to be a good one! Don’t forget to look at your 
entire digital presence to make sure you have at least one high-quality photo listed with your brand. Google search is a commonly missed opportunity. Don’t worry, it’s an easy fix! Google uses their very own social network information first to populate the search results side bar. Make sure you gave a great photo or high-quality logo and accurate information listed on your Google+ account.
2. Spam following attacks
Managers that do this are like the sign spinners of social media marketing.
I understand how this strategy developed as you can get short-term results from using this tactic. But these followers are hardly worth your efforts and are most likely either spam-bots or accounts that are not linked to your decision makers.
You should still keep your ratios clean (follow fewer accounts than you have followers) and follow industry leaders and influencers. The key is to focus your efforts when it makes sense for your strategy, not sporadically and aggressively. Twitter will actually step in when it becomes too much of a problem, but please, never get to that point.
3. Miss an engagement or sales opportunity
Uh, hello? It’s called SOCIAL media. Be social! Especially if you are a B2B organization, this type of engagement just isn’t as common as the B2C counterparts on social media. Capitalize on the opportunity as it arises! There is no shortage of free software available to help manage your engagement. Find brand champions that aren’t tagging your account, yet still praising your name, fix customer problems or complaints and develop new sales leads.
Make sure your engagement is timely and relevant. Search all hashtags used or links shared before posting or replying. Also, make sure the account you are engaging with is a real person not just a bot or an irrelevant twitter user.
4. Forget to sign out of the company account
Yikes! This is an ugly one. People get fired over this and it is not a great situation to be in. Personally, as a practicing social media manager, I steer clear of posting politics on my personal social accounts and I keep it PG. This choice decreases my risk of posting something truly terrible on a company account. Newton’s law of gravity doesn’t apply to the internet. What goes up, stays up on the internet.
There are too many examples like the twitter accident that happened to Chrysler.
5. Assume you have learned everything
The beauty and challenge of social media marketing is that it’s always changing. It’s hard to be the ultimate expert in something that is always changing and moving! Stay in touch with reality and assume there is always something new to learn and observe. I find it to be the best way to approach social media.
Hashtag conversations and meanings can change hourly, platforms have repositioned based on users habits and algorithms change all the time! The Internet is a place where traditional marketing practices and new forms of communication can be used in collaboration to create meaningful engagements with your audience.
Here are a few methods I use to stay up-to-date on my social media marketing skills:
Use social media platforms for personal use
Read and subscribe to social media marketing blogs and news outlets
Listen to podcasts on the digital strategy
Attend webinars on social media marketing
Look at competitors or other industries and figure out what is working for them
Make sure not to commit any of these social media mistakes and comment below with other social media rules that stand the test of time.
by Tim Boivin | May 10, 2017 | Blog
When it comes to product launches, many companies hang their hat on making a big splash at the biggest trade show in their industry. And then they are disappointed.
For those targeting the healthcare IT market, that usually means HIMSS. For those targeting providers, the Medical Group Management Association (MGMA) show is often cited as a great launching pad.
For payers, it’s the Association of Health Insurance Plans (AHIP) Institute & Expo. For a life science/pharma audience, eyeforpharma Barcelona is a perennial favorite due to the heavy pharma presence in Europe.
But as Caterina Lui of PR Newswire points out on the Beyond PR blog, launching during a big show is not always ideal. And in another Beyond PR post, she provides excellent insights on whether your solution is even truly ready to launch.
One of the biggest drawbacks to launching at such large industry trade shows and conferences is the sheer number of companies who are planning to do likewise. This becomes an even more pronounced challenge if your company is launching a minor upgrade to its platform or app, or if your company is a newcomer or relative unknown in the market.
In both cases, a launch as much as a month or even two months before a trade show can help build momentum going into the show, instead of being crowded out by all the PR noise generated during the show. It allows you a greater opportunity to secure quality time with reporters whose conference schedules (covering educational sessions, filing stories, doing social media posts, etc.) are pretty crammed during the conference. It also allows you to brief analysts at the top firms ahead of the launch.
Here are some other best practices for trade show launches from my Amendola colleagues:
Lisa Chernikoff, Account Director In the best-case scenario for a product launch at a trade show, you can not only include results and ROI from a beta customer or pilot site in the press release, but also have that client available for an interview at the show (or before or after). Clients speaking about their experience with the product is much more beneficial than company execs talking about features and functionality.
Also, make sure that the new product info highlights not only what it is, but also why it really matters for the target audience. What are the larger implications for the market? How does it relate to industry trends and issues?
Chad Van Alstin, Content & Media Relations Manager As a former editor, I always found it challenging to cover product launches at trade shows without some kind of prior knowledge. Simply telling me a company was going to announce a product pretty much melded together with all the other launches after a while.
There has to be some kind of teaser or hook a spoiler that many companies are often hesitant to give away ahead of the show that is released to the media a week or two in advance. Otherwise, it all just becomes noise after a while, especially with a huge show like HIMSS. I think too many companies rely on the fact that editors will simply want to cover whatever it is the company is doing but in a market with so many new names added to a long list every year, that’s just never the case. You have to spoil things a little bit in order to drum up interest.
Amy Koehlmoos, Senior Account Director Leverage the power of social media – create a Twitter campaign around the product launch and use the show’s #hashtag to reach attendees. As with any campaign, frequency is key, but be sure to follow best practices and include plenty of non-promotional tweets to maintain an optimal content mix.
Rich media (images, videos and graphics) will help your tweets stand out above the noise, and don’t be afraid to get creative. People are much more likely to share a clever meme than a picture of a widget.
Stephanie Janard, Senior Writer — If you’re launching a new software solution, there’s no hard and fast rule that says you have to actually demo it. In this era of value-based care, why not stage a demo that 
shows how life can be better as a result of using your newly launched software or app? Likewise, if you have a tangible, physical product to demo, make a real show of it preferably with a real-life example. If you can get champion customers on the act, all the better.
So there you have it from the A-Team experts (and PR Newswire). Should you bet it all on a trade show launch or not? It may be a crapshoot, but make sure you evaluate all your options both at the show and in other timeframes before committing your entire marketing budget to the effort. And please share your thoughts below on what you have seen that works well for a product launch either at, before or after a trade show.
by Todd Stein | May 3, 2017 | Blog
Who watches the watchdogs? It’s a phrase that conjures the creation of police commissions or intelligence oversight committees. But if you’re a believer in the sanctity of the Fourth Estate (and God knows we need them now more than ever), then the watchdogs who need watching are journalists. And no one watches or analyzes, or critiques journalists in greater depth and with sharper insight than the Nieman Journalism Lab at Harvard University.
The purpose of the Nieman Lab is to figure out how journalism can adapt to the Internet Age while remaining relevant and profitable. Recently, in “Newsonomics: The 2016 Media Year by the Numbers and a look toward 2017,” the Nieman Lab’s Ken Doctor turned up some fascinating trends that will both bedevil and delight those of us in PR and business who strive daily, with more or less success, to earn the media’s adoration and praise.
Have Your Fake and Eat it Too
The bedeviling side of Nieman Lab’s look back at 2016 is the messy shift from print to digital, a transformation long underway that is weighing ever more heavily on the news media. The industry-rocking trend of 2016, of course, was the rise of “fake news” or rather the rise in awareness of fake news, thanks to the Presidential Election. Doctor takes some easy swipes at Mark Zuckerberg for his much-publicized claim that 99% of Facebook’s content isn’t fake. “Ever heard a publisher proudly proclaim, “We get it right 99 times out of a hundred?” he asks.
But the fake news phenomenon isn’t going to have much impact on the field of technology PR. More significant for the business of Media Relations is the sharp increase in the number of PR “targets” as the Internet continues to make it easier for small, independent content producers to compete with the mainstream media. This democratization of publishing and broadcasting offers both more opportunities and more diluted opportunities for getting the word out about a company, a product, or a thought leader.
The Young and the Restless
Here’s Nieman Lab’s take on one of the biggest online outposts, a not-so-new media that has finally come into its own after a decade of unrealized promise and that is quickly disrupting its Old Media birthplace, radio:
“Podcasting now reshuffles the deck, mixing and matching talent on scheduled airtime and on demand, with unpredictable consequences. The movement of younger talentwithin the emerging podcast economy poses both a great opportunity and threat for public radio as we know it, and is a boon for newer entrants like Gimlet Media, Panoply, This American Life/Serial, and Midroll Media.”
A related trend that accelerated in 2016 and into 2017 is the flight of ad revenue from mainstream publishing as advertisers spread their dollars online in search of eyeballs (and now ears, too).
“The Wall Street Journal lost more than a fifth of its overall advertising revenue in the third quarter of 2016,” Doctor writes. Other blue ribbon outlets suffered similar losses: The New York Times saw print ad revenue decline by 18 percent; McClatchy reported a 17 percent loss; Gannet lost 15 percent; and Tronc (the former Tribune Company) lost 11 percent.
To compensate for those huge loses, publishers are seeking revenue directly from readers in the form of digital subscriptions and add-ons. That requires high-quality content and attractive digital platforms something that “only the national/global dailies have been able to achieve,” according to Doctor. How will the rest of the nation’s dailies fare amid this historic transformation? Judging by the number of journalists losing their jobs, not so well. Nielsen Lab counted just 27,300 journalists working for U.S. dailies in 2016, 4,000 of whom work for the four national titles. The size of the local press has declined by half, according to Doctor.
Heads Up to PR customers
What does that mean for PR? The math is pretty simple. With an ever smaller number of traditional publications managing to keep the lights on, the competition for coverage among the dailies is becoming downright cutthroat. The days of guaranteeing that a successful company in a hot market will be covered by The New York Times or Wall Street Journal are over.
So what’s the answer? How can companies in search of media coverage adjust to this fast-evolving environment?
You can read the answer in Part Two of this post. In the meantime, a few hints: Traditional PR is dead. The press release as many people think of it is a goner. Thought leadership will be a key PR budget priority. Content is (roll your eyes if you must) king.
But in the end, it’s still all about relationships.
by Julie Donnelly | Apr 26, 2017 | Blog
Dear Republicans, welcome to the Health Reform PR Fire Swamp (HRPRFS)! Like the Fire Swamp from the Princess Bride, the HRPRFS features several obstacles that did tremendous damage to the Affordable Care Act. As Republicans are hurtling forward with their ACA replacement bill, now called the American Health Care Act, it’s time to reflect on the Democrats failures. Here’s how Democrats fared against the Fire Swamp’s terrors, and how Republicans might avoid the same fate:
Flame Spurts: In the Princess Bride, flame spurts erupt seemingly unexpectedly in the Fire Swamp. But on closer inspection, it is discovered that a distinctive popping sound precedes each flame spurt, making them easier to avoid.
In the HRPRFS, it’s very clear that flame spurts erupt every time a blanket claim is made by a health care reform bill’s proponents. Case in point: former President Obama’s claim that “if you like your health care plan, you can keep it.” This statement will go down as one of the worst PR blunders of the Obama Administration. The reality was that 4 million people on the individual market had to switch plans, in many cases because their old plans did not meet the minimum creditable coverage standards imposed by the ACA. But it’s too late for explaining once the flame spurts have burned you ask Princess Buttercup.
Republicans seem to have learned something from the Democrats failure to avoid these flame spurts. HHS Secretary Tom Price, speaking earlier this month, stopped short of saying everyone would be able to keep their doctors with the ACA replacement bill, instead saying “Our goal is absolutely to make certain that individuals have the opportunity to select their physician.”
Rodents of Unusual Size: The Fire Swamp in the Princess Bride featured giant, gnarly rats with sharp teeth. The ACA, meanwhile, got hit with Premium Increases of Unusual Size. When it was reported last fall that premiums on the Arizona Health Exchange would grow by an average of 116 percent for a mid-level plan, those affected were outraged, and Republicans found a new rallying cry for their claims that “Obamacare is collapsing”.
Just one insurer remains in the market, down from eight health insurers last year, after the payers priced the products too low to adequately cover the costs of a sicker risk pool than had been predicted. It was reported at the time that just a small percentage of Arizona’s population buys their insurance on the ACA marketplace and that most of those receive subsidies to absorb those large increases. But it almost doesn’t matter.
After hearing those Premium Increases of Unusual Size, everything else just sounds like a dull hum. Those big numbers stick in the imagination of the public and explaining, again, is fruitless. Earlier this month, The New York Times tried again, publishing an interactive feature explaining that only 3 percent of Americans face ACA premium increases, because everyone else either has employer-sponsored health plans, which have faced modest increases in recent years, or they receive subsidies to cover large premium increases.
Republicans faced their own Rodent of Unusual Size when the Congressional Budget Office estimated that 24 million Americans would lose their health insurance under their proposed replacement bill. They attempted to defuse the anticipated RUS by discrediting the CBO ahead of time, explaining that the non-partisan agency had previously been wrong on ACA insured estimates. But that tactic mostly failed, and Republicans are busily amending the bill to try to reduce that 24 million uninsured number, while also appeasing conservatives who want to further limit Medicaid spending.
Lightning Sand: Another of the three terrors of the Princess Bride’s Fire Swamp is lightning sand, a drier and quicker form of quicksand that swallowed up Buttercup in an instant. When it comes to health reform PR, the lightning sand tends to suck in any positive PR, making it instantly disappear in the shadow of bad news.
The dominant story of the ACA over the past several months has been high prices and few choices for consumers. This narrative has drowned out more positive stories, such as how the ACA has enabled a large number of small business owners and entrepreneurs to access health coverage. The health reform PR lightning sand has also tended to bury encouraging ACA cost data. For instance, the federal government saved $7.4 billion in avoided payments to hospitals to cover the uninsured known as the uncompensated care pool in one year alone, 2014. More than two-thirds of these costs were avoided due to Medicaid expansion, a part of the ACA which is now in Republicans crosshairs.
Republicans are getting their first taste of the lightning sand, as the CBO estimated that their ACA replacement bill would save $337 billion, but it was quickly buried by the fact that the bill would increase the ranks of the uninsured by 24 million (See: RUSes, above).
**BONUS**
Bog of Eternal Stench: The pitfalls of health reform PR cannot adequately be contained by one 1980s fantasy film. So, I’ll offer Labyrinth’s Bog of Eternal Stench as an important cautionary tale for Republicans as they move their ACA replacement bill through Congress.
When it comes to PR, a botched launch stinks for a long, long time. The healthcare.gov debacle haunted the ACA for years. It severely hobbled the credibility of the Obama Administration’s health reform efforts, as well as causing actual harm for some consumers who were unable to sign up for new health plans in time. Reporters continued to write about it as late as 2016.
Republicans will necessarily have to overhaul or completely replace the federal exchange. State exchanges will also have to change dramatically to accommodate new plan designs, pricing structures and tax credits.
If Republicans decide to eliminate the exchanges, they will need to figure out how Americans will access these new plans instead. In any event, this upcoming transition is ripe for technical and operational challenges that are likely to have real human consequences. Republicans would do well to prepare the public ahead of time for road bumps, while maintaining realistic internal timelines.
Putting the Fire Swamp in the Rearview
In the Princess Bride, Buttercup and Westley manage to best all the Fire Swamp’s challenges and live happily ever after. Robin Wright has moved on from hapless Princess to shrewd First Lady, as Claire Underwood on House of Cards, with a very promising political future.
But that’s only in Hollywood. The only escape from the health reform PR Fire Swamp, it seems, is to hand off responsibility for crafting and executing the legislation to the other party. Democratic House Leader Nancy Pelosi has been clear, it’s the GOP’s Fire Swamp now. It’s Republicans turn to listen for the popping sounds before the flame spurts, and do their best to set Americans expectations about what this new incarnation of health reform will and won’t accomplish, and within what timeframe.
