Shortly after his inauguration, President Trump vowed to work with Congressional Republicans to overturn the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. He recently enacted an executive order that will begin to hollow out the law. Among other things, his executive order makes it easier for citizens to avoid paying the fine outlined under the executive mandate.
Critics fear that President Trump’s executive orders are a prelude to repealing the healthcare law in its entirety. Congress has stated that it intends to overturn the law as well.
What impact would repealing the Affordable Care Act have on the healthcare industry. How will you need to adjust your healthcare marketing plan?
Healthcare Marketing After the Affordable Act Repeal
Repealing the Affordable Care Act would create a number of changes in the healthcare industry. Here are some changes marketers may need to make.
Shift Focus from Medicaid Patients
The Affordable Care Act allowed states to expand Medicaid to patients making under 133% of the federal poverty line. Medicaid expansion was mostly an afterthought of the law, but it turned out that the majority of people covered under healthcare expansion received it.
Some states allow insurers and providers to market to Medicaid users. They have expanded their marketing efforts to reach Medicaid patients, since they account for over 10 million of the people that received healthcare.
If the Affordable Care Act is repealed, people in this group will most likely to be indefinitely uninsured. You will need to shift your focus back towards reaching patients with individual or group plans.
Focus on Personal Selling
When the Affordable Care Act was first passed, Talai Osmonbekov and Eric Yordy wrote a paper titled “The Affordable Care Act’s Impact on Healthcare Marketing.” Among other changes, their paper emphasized the shift from personal selling to mass advertising.
Their analysis made sense for a couple of reasons:
- A greater number of people were insured, which would expand the market for healthcare providers.
- All healthcare plans were required to provide certain, minimum coverage (including prescription drug benefits and prenatal care).
- Healthcare plans tended to be more homogenous, so providers could create a more uniform marketing message.
If the Affordable Care Act is repealed without a similar alternative, the focus will need to shift back to personal selling.
Marketing Will Need to Turn Focus from People With Pre-Existing Conditions
Arguably the biggest change with the Affordable Care Act was that it barred insurers from denying coverage due to preexisting conditions. For the first time in their lives, many patients with serious health problems were able to get the coverage they needed.
This was a tremendous benefit for many patients. If the law is repealed, many of these sick people will be left without coverage again.
This will force marketers to shift their emphasis towards healthier patients. They will need to focus more on preventive care, dealing with routine health problems and treatments that weren’t previously covered under most insurance plans, such as HGH injections. Of course, it’s still important to market treatment for chronic conditions as well, but marketers won’t be able to focus on them to the same degree.
These Changes May Not Affect Citizens in States that Want to Keep the ACA
Two Senate Republicans are introducing a replacement law that would allow states to opt to keep the Affordable Care Act.
“Republicans think that if you like your insurance, you should keep it. And we mean it,” Senator Bill Cassidy of Louisiana told Fox News. “They could opt to stay in Obamacare or they could opt for no federal help. So, California and New York, you love Obamcare? You can keep it.”
If the replacement bill is passed and your healthcare business is located in a state that is grandfathered into the ACA, then the repeal won’t have an impact.