5 PR Lessons from the Affordable Care Act's Botched Rollout
Politicians have earned a bad rap for making empty promises, speaking misleadingly, or telling outright lies. Politics is PR cloaked in the robes of historical protocols and diplomacy. Don't be fooled. A politician - be they Congressman, Senator, or even the President of the United States - is a brand. Which leads me to the much-maligned, unfortunate story of the Affordable Care Act.
In the case of President Obama's Affordable Care Act launch, lessons abound for PR flacks. What should have been a legacy-making, gamechanging affair for our nation is, at best, a cautionary tale of the dangers of over-management, discordancy, and bad timing.
1.Avoid the Bait and Switch: Obama had to pitch his concept of affordable, universal healthcare to a broad audience including an intractable Congressional contingent determined to see the initiative fail. After the Act passed, President Obama has had to clarify or backtrack on some of the Act's signature provisions -- specifically the now infamous promise that Americans could keep their healthcare plan if they were happy with it. A good selling point for the legislation except that it turned out NOT TO BE TRUE. The lesson: while it can be tempting to gloss over contentions elements of a pitch, or file down pointy edges of a story for the sake of a media sell: BE WEARY. Don't promise reporters something you cannot deliver. You'll sacrifice a long-term relationship and your credibility for the sake of a quick press hit.
2. Shoo those Extra Cooks out of the Kitchen: The utter flop of the HealthCare.gov site is the fault of several factors, the first of which was that there was no singular, central oversight of the project. HOW CAN THIS BE? Rollouts- be they campaigns, events, or a website meant to accommodate millions of unique users - must be conducted like a symphony. One conductor + one composition = beautiful symphonic harmony. With multiple contractors working off of God-Knows-How-Many work orders -- HealthCare.gov is a cacophonic mess of bad code and discordant operating protocols
3. Timing is Everything: Critics have charged that HealthCare.gov was released with insufficient testing. When the beta version of the site was tested with just a fraction of the intended user base, it stalled, crashed, and caused havoc. They still released a month later in the hopes that they'd patch the bugs in situ. The result: a crummy website made an already unpopular legislative initiative look even crummier and the President burned precious public goodwill at a critical juncture in his program's debut.
4.Be Informed and Make Sure you Have a Team that Gives you the Straight Dope: It's been reported that many of the fatal website glitches were not reported to the President for fear of his reaction. The President would have done well to seek more sit-downs, more face-to-face, and more hard-to-hear truths about potential problems and dissension. When the forecast is clear skies and smooth sailing, you're missing something. Ask difficult questions and be ready for obstacles.
5. To Communicate Effectively and Win Hearts and Minds KEEP IT SIMPLE: The Affordable Care Act, in keeping with a confounding and unfortunate legislative precedent, is extremely long and complex.Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi famously commented "We have to pass it in order to find out what's in it." While oversimplification can lead to obfuscation of details, the Affordable Care Act was a vulnerable PR brand because the people whom it was designed to serve couldn't access its meaning on their own. This meant that consumers would turn to their trusted news providers: journalists, influentials, and even friends and family. When your brand promulgation is a free-for-all, the risk of misinformation and slander is unacceptably high.








