The White House and health reform supporters have — wisely, perhaps — put a halt on a planned Obamacare rollout marketing blitz, a blunt recognition of the enrollment website’s failure to work.
“You can have the greatest PR program imaginable on all different platforms — social, media, advertising and earned media — but you have to have a product that is functioning,” said Peter Mirijanian, a public relations official, Politico reported.
The delayed marketing campaign is likely to add to the cycle of woes that’s plaguing Obamacare. The entire health care package was dependent upon many enrolling — especially the “young invincibles,” as the White House termed them, Politico reported — and every stall of the enrollment process tips the balance toward failure even further.
“Why would you spend $1 million sending people to a website that’s broken?” one health insurance company executive said, arguing that advertising dollars at this point is “money wasted,” Politico reported.
And health lobbyist Licy Do Canto of the DoCanto Group said similarly.
“Just logically, no one wants to drive or increase the problem that the website is having in terms of people intake and enrolling people and make that problem worse,” she said, in Politico. “Until the administration and others get a handle on it, and I think they will, understandably you don’t want to overflood the system.”
SEE ALSO: Obama spends heavily on PR firms to polish troubled health care law
• Cheryl K. Chumley can be reached at cchumley@washingtontimes.com.
Please read our comment policy before commenting.