Obama Administration Launches Full-On Courtship As Open Enrollment Nears
It will use social media, TV ads, email and direct mail to reach more uninsured Americans. But the media blitz will run up against Republicans' campaigns touting the opposite message.
The Associated Press:
Mailings, Social Media Ads Woo Uninsured For Health Sign-Up
The Obama administration says it’ll send more than 10 million mailings to woo the uninsured for the final health care law sign-up season of President Barack Obama’s tenure. Add to that countless email messages to both prospective and returning customers — and ads on social media platforms such as Instagram and Facebook. (10/13)
The Wall Street Journal:
Health-Care Law Ads Clash With GOP Message
The Obama administration is planning to use television ads and direct mail to boost participation in the Affordable Care Act’s exchanges in the coming open-enrollment period, but its timing will mean fighting for attention amid the noise of the election. The ads, which are partly focused on the affordability of coverage under the law, will run headlong into campaigns by opponents of the law who are using their own political ads to denounce it as a costly boondoggle. (Armour, 10/13)
The New York Times:
Health Care Law’s Beneficiaries Reflect Its Strengths, And Its Faults
Cara Suzannah Latil is living proof that the Affordable Care Act works — but also of why a central piece of the law is in turmoil. Ms. Latil, 49, who works at a homeless shelter in Santa Fe, N.M., is one of millions of Americans who once found it difficult or impossible to get health insurance because they already had serious illnesses. Hepatitis C was ravaging her liver when she learned in 2014 that she also had breast cancer. Through the health care law, she was able to buy subsidized insurance that paid for all but $800 of her cancer surgery and radiation, she said, as well as tens of thousands of dollars’ worth of medications that cured her hepatitis. (Goodnough and Abelson, 10/14)
In other national health care news —
The Associated Press/USA Today:
The Federal Government Knows Surprisingly Little About Gun Accidents
It's the kind of information you might expect from long-range government research: On average, one American child or teenager is killed or injured every day in an accidental shooting. The most common victims are ages 3 or 16. And the shootings happen most frequently in their own homes.Yet for the most part, such government research doesn't exist. (Paine, 10/14)
The Associated Press/USA Today:
Gun Accidents Kill Kids Every Other Day
[Bryson Mees-Hernandez's death] could be blamed on many factors, from his grandmother’s negligence to the failure of government and industry to find ways to prevent his death and so many others. The Associated Press and the USA TODAY Network set out to determine just how many others there have been. The findings: During the first six months of this year, minors died from accidental shootings — at their own hands, or at the hands of other children or adults — at a pace of one every other day, far more than limited federal statistics indicate. (Foley, Fenn and Penzenstadler, 10/14)
Stat:
Devices Putting Open-Heart Surgery Patients At Risk, CDC Says
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Thursday warned that contaminated medical devices used in open-heart surgeries could be to blame for a rash of infections in patients in the United States and Europe. Data published in the CDC’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report indicate that at least 11 patients in the US were infected with bacteria from a heater-cooler device that maintains patients’ internal temperatures during surgery. Previous reports indicated that six people in Switzerland were infected, and dozens of Americans have come forward with symptoms. (Boodman, 10/13)