A consensus is forming in the public relations world about what went wrong with Obamacare’s horrendous Healthcare.gov rollout.
In what Politico calls “a case study for crisis management consultants and their clients of what not to do,” three problems are clear.
First, the Obama administration wasn’t truthful. By downplaying the website’s crashes and error messages as “glitches” due to heavier-than-expected traffic, the White House misled the public on how bad the system actually was.
Second, updates lacked success stories. That’s probably because only 6 people successfully enrolled via the website on its first day.
Finally, despite more than three years to get ready Obamacare still lacks an effective spokesperson.
But that’s not quite right.
Until recently, President Barack Obama was a very effective spokesman when he told anyone who would listen that his signature bill would expand coverage, reduce costs and improve quality – all without requiring anyone to forfeit their current plans, doctors and hospitals.
Though the criticisms from PR consultants of the Obama administration’s handling of its latest fiasco are well-deserved, the problem with Obamacare runs much deeper than a textbook failure of crisis management. The problem with Obamacare is that it was designed by ideologues, implemented by amateurs and sold on a lie.
No amount of spin or surrogacy can fix that.
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