yumio.net Blog

As we witness yet another Democratic Healthcare effort going down in defeat, it seems to me Dems once again failed to MARKET the new healthcare legislation to the Joe Plumbers of middle America.
Consumer marketing 101 – people don’t want to feel stupid when comfronted with a purchase/conversion decision. And Democrat policy wonks always cast healthcare legislation in a complex, numbers oriented way that makes the average person’s eyes glaze over. We don’t want to know nor care if the total amount of health care bill is $852 Billion or $823 Billion. Or whether the coverage is 93% of Americans or 91%. The entire debate became about TOTAL COST of the bill, not about what it means to average Americans at an individual level.

What does it do for me, the average American who has some form of employer-based coverage? Most probably realize Healthcare is too expensive – premiums rising every year, actual Dr bills are outrageous – $4000/night hospital stays, or heard of relatives who went bankrupt due to medical bills. And that the whole employer based system requires one to be employed, which everyone knows now is not so guaranteed. So why hasn’t anyone tapped into this fear/uncertainty in marketing the new healtcare legislation?

And why hasn’t someone from the Dems side come up with a simple slogan like “Decent Health coverage for anyone who wants it for $100/month”. It doesn’t even have to be completely true (you can always pass additional legislation to help the poor, the illegals, abortion issue, etc.)
But a simple core idea like that can be appealing even to those with insurance, because it offers assurance that even if I lose my job, I can still afford some type of care – and this is not at all emphasized in the debate.
Like Hillarycare, Obamacare was run by too many Health Economists and Budget Directors (Peter Orzag should never have been the face of Healthcare), and not by Marketeers, who could’ve packaged & sold this more effectively.