Mickey’s Marketing Tip O’ the Day: MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell says Obamacare is “unmarketable” because it’s not “understandable,” compared with a simple plan like Medicare:
I have never met anyone, outside of the government, who can describe what the new health-care law is. You cannot market something that is indescribable.
I’m not so sure. I suspect the Obama plan would be a lot more understandable if his people would stop using the word “exchanges” to describe the places where uninsured Americans will go (with their new subsidies) to buy health insurance. Do you know what an insurance “exchange” is? I didn’t–at least the first 300 times I heard it. “Exchange” is an intimidating, abstract, wonky word that, if it makes people think of anything at all makes them think of the New York Stock Exchange. Are they going to have to wade through a sea of traders yelling at each other to get insured?
Why not just say “Web site”–as in, “There will be a Web site you can go to and choose one of several competing insurance plans.” That’s something people readily understand–they go to Web sites to buy things all the time. … Those people who are intimidated by the Web tend to be older, and they’re covered by Medicare already! The point is to let those who aren’t covered have some idea that the future Obama’s experts have mapped out for them will be workable. …