Abstract
Federal funding cuts to enrollment outreach and marketing of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) marketplace options in 2017 has raised questions about the adequacy of the information the public has received, especially among populations vulnerable to uninsurance. Using health insurance ads aired from January 1, 2018, through December 21, 2018, we conducted a content analysis focused on (a) the messaging differences by ad language (English vs. Spanish) and (b) the messaging appeals used by nonfederally sponsored health insurance ads in 2018. The results reveal that privately sponsored ads focused on benefit appeals (e.g., prescription drugs), while publicly sponsored ads emphasized financial assistance subsidies. Few ads, regardless of language, referenced the ACA explicitly and privately sponsored Spanish-language ads emphasized benefits (e.g., choice of doctor) over enrollment-relevant details. This study emphasizes that private-sponsored television marketing may not provide specific and actionable health insurance information to the public, especially for the Spanish-speaking populations.
Get full access to this article
View all access options for this article.
References
Supplementary Material
Please find the following supplemental material available below.
For Open Access articles published under a Creative Commons License, all supplemental material carries the same license as the article it is associated with.
For non-Open Access articles published, all supplemental material carries a non-exclusive license, and permission requests for re-use of supplemental material or any part of supplemental material shall be sent directly to the copyright owner as specified in the copyright notice associated with the article.
