It’s been fascinating to watch what’s transpired during the course of the previous few weeks with the government shutdown and debt ceiling crisis that mercifully (if only temporarily) came to a close last week.
The stated goal of the Republicans was to delay the Affordable Care Act (ACA) just as the
launch of enrollment on the state and federal health exchanges was beginning on Oct. 1. It was to be the first step in eventually repealing the law entirely.
As strategic communications consultants, we would have advised the following course of action for those seeking delay and/or repeal of the ACA: Stay out of your own way.
To wit, opponents of the ACA – or Obamacare, as it’s sometimes called – had used a steady drumbeat of language and talking points about what a disaster the health bill and rollout would be for the country since the law was passed in 2010. Whether you agree with the validity of those sentiments or not, the bottom line is that the message was consistent and the messengers were uniformly lined up in lockstep to spread it.
So far at least, those who said the launch would be a nightmare have been spot on with their assessments. By any objective public relations measure, the rollout of the ACA has been a debacle, highlighted by website crashes, consumer confusion and an overall inability of large segments of the population to sign up for a service they were assured would be available on Oct. 1. Even states like Maryland that embraced the law and built their own exchanges are having substantial problems. Those who oppose the law are justified in saying “I told you so” while their prophesized train wreck comes to fruition.
The problem is the majority of the country has been too busy blaming the Republicans for the government shutdown and the threat of a credit default to notice all the problems with the Democratically-supported ACA. Sure, polls indicate that a slight majority of the country is opposed to the ACA, but two-thirds didn’t want one party to hold the country’s economic stability hostage in an effort to defund the law.
Nevertheless, imagine what opponents of the ACA could have done if they’d simply bitten their lips and let everything that’s happened with the launch of the exchanges play out in public view since Oct. 1.
The court of public opinion could have swayed completely in their favor, allowing them to chip away at additional segments of the law such as the individual mandate and medical device tax.
As Ezra Klein of the Washington Post notes, “Six weeks (from now), there would’ve been another opportunity to close the government. And it’s entirely possible the federal health-care law still wouldn’t be working. At that point, the Republican Party would’ve had a very good argument for delay – and certainly a very good argument for delay of the individual mandate. It would be the logical outgrowth of both their messaging and the reality of the law.”
Opponents also would have had three full months to hammer the administration on making changes to the law, because the opening of the exchanges on Oct. 1 was NOT the start of the ACA. The provisions of the law don’t even take effect until Jan. 1.
But the fight over the ACA is one the public has lost an appetite for at this point. No one wants it rehashed in January or February, when the new respective deadlines to fund the government and raise the debt ceiling have been set.
The ACA could yet fail, but it definitely won’t collapse because of anything that transpired during the course of the last few weeks.
A well thought out public relations and strategic communications strategy stays the course and doesn’t step on its own story. It lets the narrative play out.
In this case, steady and slow might have won the race, at least in terms of public opinion. But the tortoise strapped nitrous oxide to its back in an effort to beat the hare, and ultimately blew past a finish line where none of the spectators were even lined up to notice.
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Jeremy Church is an account supervisor for WordWrite Communications. He can be reached at jeremy.church@wordwritepr.com and on Twitter @churchjeremy.
