• Menu
  • Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar

Before Header

  • About Us
  • Lexicon
  • Contact Us
  • Our Store
  • ↑
  • ↓
  • ←
  • →

Balloon Juice

Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

When you’re a Republican, they let you do it.

Republicans: slavery is when you own me. freedom is when I own you.

The fundamental promise of conservatism all over the world is a return to an idealized past that never existed.

“What are Republicans afraid of?” Everything.

At some point, the ability to learn is a factor of character, not IQ.

The poor and middle-class pay taxes, the rich pay accountants, the wealthy pay politicians.

I am pretty sure these ‘journalists’ were not always such a bootlicking sycophants.

Consistently wrong since 2002

White supremacy is terrorism.

Everybody saw this coming.

The next time the wall street journal editorial board speaks the truth will be the first.

Whatever happens next week, the fight doesn’t end.

Fuck these fucking interesting times.

You don’t get to peddle hatred on saturday and offer condolences on sunday.

The republican caucus is covering themselves with something, and it is not glory.

Sitting here in limbo waiting for the dice to roll

The low info voters probably won’t even notice or remember by their next lap around the goldfish bowl.

We are aware of all internet traditions.

Roe is not about choice. It is about freedom.

The press swings at every pitch, we don’t have to.

Of course you can have champagne before noon. That’s why orange juice was invented.

This must be what justice looks like, not vengeful, just peaceful exuberance.

If you still can’t see these things even now, maybe politics isn’t your forte and you should stop writing about it.

Tide comes in. Tide goes out. You can’t explain that.

Mobile Menu

  • Seattle Meet-up Post
  • 2025 Activism
  • Targeted Political Fundraising
  • Donate with Venmo, Zelle & PayPal
  • Site Feedback
  • War in Ukraine
  • Submit Photos to On the Road
  • Politics
  • On The Road
  • Open Threads
  • Topics
  • COVID-19
  • Authors
  • About Us
  • Contact Us
  • Lexicon
  • Our Store
  • Politics
  • Open Threads
  • 2025 Activism
  • Garden Chats
  • On The Road
  • Targeted Fundraising!
You are here: Home / Anderson On Health Insurance / Public Navigators and Private Advertising

Public Navigators and Private Advertising

by David Anderson|  August 3, 202210:45 am| 11 Comments

This post is in: Anderson On Health Insurance

FacebookTweetEmail

I am a co-first author, in conjunction with Dr. Rebecca Meyerson of the University of Wisconsin, on a new study published in JAMA Network Open. We wanted to find out if ACA insurers responded to cuts in federal navigator funding on Healthcare.gov by increasing private television advertising. We found no detectable response.

We thought that we might have found something because advertising is information provision while navigators are both information providers and administrative burden reducers. There may be an imperfect substitution effect occuring:

In a precaution adoption process model for insurance enrollment, individuals proceed from being unaware, to aware but unengaged, to deciding to enroll or not enroll in coverage, to acting on their decision about enrollment.33 Navigators and advertising both plausibly increase the awareness and potential engagement of individuals, while navigators can also aid in navigating the process of choice and enrollment. Thus, for insurers seeking to raise profits by enrolling more people in marketplace coverage, advertising may be a substitute for public funding of the navigator program, albeit an imperfect one.

We think this is important to figure out because the state of Georgia has a 1332 waiver that is under current legal dispute. If Georgia can implement its waiver, Healthcare.gov is shut down in the state it is not replaced by a state based marketplace like the ones in Pennsylvania, California and Idaho. Instead, almost all functionality would be outsourced to private sector actors who have a profit maximization motive. We would like to see how private actors responded to a significant reduction in publicly funded outreach in the past.

We leveraged Dr. Meyerson’s previous work on the role of navigators. She and her co-author took advantage of the fact that there are two flavors of navigator programs. The first is a state wide program. Every county in a state is exposed to this program. The second type of program is a “local” or substate program. Some counties in some states received extra funding for more navigator outreach. This program design allows us to split counties into two groups — those with more navigator funding cuts and those with less. We then added in the Kantar/Campaign Media Analysis Group & Wesleyan Media Project television advertising data for a difference in difference analysis of ACA television advertising as our primary specification.

We found nothing:

Null result for ACA insurer advertising in response to Navigator Cuts on Healthcare.gov

We performed a whole lot of robustness and sensitivity checks as well as event studies to see if our results were a function of the model or a reflection of reality as best we determine. Our results in all of the sensitivity checks also returned neither pragmatic nor statistically significant results.

Insurers did not change their advertising offerings in response to a cut back in publicly sponsored outreach.

Insurer advertising has been shown to be pretty decent at claiming marketshare but not at increasing market size. We think that insurers are motivated to enroll people who are likely to be profitable which is a very different motivation than enrollment programs funded by the public and government.

We think that our evidence, or more importantly, lack of evidence, suggests that the Georgia waiver model that heavily relies on profit motives to provide enrollment outreach and navigation assistance is based on faulty assumptions as insurers did not respond to a large cut in navigator funding in the past during a time that insurers were, as a class, profitable as hell.

FacebookTweetEmail
Previous Post: « Wednesday Morning Open Thread: The Wheel Turns
Next Post: The Perry Mason Moment »

Reader Interactions

11Comments

  1. 1.

    JustRuss

    August 3, 2022 at 11:13 am

    We think that insurers are motivated to enroll people who are likely to be profitable which is a very different motivation than enrollment programs funded by the public and government.

    Color me shocked.

  2. 2.

    David Anderson

    August 3, 2022 at 11:13 am

    @JustRuss: There may even be gambling going on in this establishment….

  3. 3.

    PaulB

    August 3, 2022 at 11:22 am

    If Georgia can implement its waiver, Healthcare.gov is shut down in the state it is not replaced by a state based marketplace like the ones in Pennsylvania, California and Idaho. Instead, almost all functionality would be outsourced to private sector actors who have a profit maximization motive.

    I know I shouldn’t be surprised, but this honestly just boggles my mind, that someone, anyone, would think this is a desirable scenario and a credible waiver request. It is so self-evidently and profoundly stupid that it is impossible for me to believe that this is being requested in good faith. It’s crap like this that makes me want to start screaming and throwing things.

    The thing that really hurts is that these things have profound real-world consequences. Some people will die, other people’s lives will be permanently affected, because of this stupidity, should it be allowed to stand.

  4. 4.

    Ruckus

    August 3, 2022 at 11:57 am

    @PaulB:

    The following is not aimed at you. I am ranting.

    Money talks. And it talks louder than most anything else to a lot of people. And many people have been led to believe that government money is not a replacement for profits. And profit is the holly grail of everything. Therefore everything should make as much profit as possible. Healthcare has a large profit possible but only if left alone to itself. And as a “side” note a lot of people can not afford to pay for extremely profitable healthcare because they get paid crap because money is considered more important than their lives.

    You very likely know all of the above, but it is not unreasonable to note that some people like money far more than humanity. Or anything else. And will screw their neighbors and fellow citizens to their death beds for an extra dime of profit. It is worth noticing that it is possible that 32 of the 33 most advanced nations have good, reasonable healthcare, controlled and paid for in good part by their governments. That one exception is surprise, surprise the United States of profit. And less you misunderstand, I’ve owned 2 businesses and actually do understand profit and loss. The difference is that health care is not a business that can afford to make a profit from the loss of it’s customers, it needs to not have a loss but not have a high profit at the expense of it’s customers because it’s an absolute need, not just a desirable one

    And your rant is absolutely correct. There is a reason that so many nations interfere in their healthcare business and we don’t. PROFIT is that motive. In many cases it is actually racism that causes that interference.

  5. 5.

    jonas

    August 3, 2022 at 12:05 pm

    It’s just icing on the cake that a lot of these states trying to minimize the number of people accessing ACA insurance or Medicaid are also the ones about to force a lot of women to carry high-risk pregnancies to term, which are phenomenally expensive to deal with. So we can’t treat your ectopic pregnancy until you’re literally about to bleed out on the ER floor, and on top of that you don’t have insurance! Super.

  6. 6.

    patrick II

    August 3, 2022 at 1:41 pm

    @PaulB:

    Heretic. You need to renew your faith in the free market.

  7. 7.

    oatler

    August 3, 2022 at 2:21 pm

    The wheel turns, does it not?

  8. 8.

    trollhattan

    August 3, 2022 at 2:24 pm

    Seldom (never) have useful input to the excellent healthcare series, but goddamn if I did not learn yesterday that my premium will go up 14.48% next year. 😲

  9. 9.

    delphinium

    August 3, 2022 at 3:04 pm

    @trollhattan: Learned mine will be going up 22%, but am on the state insurance exchange so at least have the option of choosing a different (and hopefully cheaper) plan.

  10. 10.

    MazeDancer

    August 3, 2022 at 3:27 pm

    Excellent work!

  11. 11.

    Victor Matheson

    August 3, 2022 at 6:12 pm

    Nice landing for that piece. I thought it was interesting when you presented it at Holy Cross. Congrats!

Comments are closed.

Primary Sidebar

On The Road - Albatrossity - Serengeti Day 2, Round 3 9
Image by Albatrossity (6/12/25)

PA Supreme Court At Risk

We did it!

We raised the 25,000 for The Civics Center, and with the external matches, that gives them $60,000 for this Spring effort!

You guys rock!

Recent Comments

  • columbusqueen on Thursday Night Open Thread (Jun 13, 2025 @ 2:00am)
  • Bruce K in ATH-GR on Well, This is Fucking Horrifying (Jun 13, 2025 @ 1:59am)
  • prostratedragon on Well, This is Fucking Horrifying (Jun 13, 2025 @ 1:58am)
  • Chris T. on On The Road – snarlymon – Peterson Automotive Museum (Jun 13, 2025 @ 1:56am)
  • NotMax on Well, This is Fucking Horrifying (Jun 13, 2025 @ 1:38am)

Balloon Juice Posts

View by Topic
View by Author
View by Month & Year
View by Past Author

Featuring

Medium Cool
Artists in Our Midst
Authors in Our Midst
War in Ukraine
Donate to Razom for Ukraine

🎈Keep Balloon Juice Ad Free

Become a Balloon Juice Patreon
Donate with Venmo, Zelle or PayPal

Calling All Jackals

Site Feedback
Nominate a Rotating Tag
Submit Photos to On the Road
Balloon Juice Anniversary (All Links)
Balloon Juice Anniversary (All Posts)
Fix Nyms with Apostrophes

Social Media

Balloon Juice
WaterGirl
TaMara
John Cole
DougJ (aka NYT Pitchbot)
Betty Cracker
Tom Levenson
David Anderson
Major Major Major Major
DougJ NYT Pitchbot
mistermix

Keeping Track

Legal Challenges (Lawfare)
Republicans Fleeing Town Halls (TPM)
21 Letters (to Borrow or Steal)
Search Donations from a Brand

Site Footer

Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

  • Facebook
  • RSS
  • Twitter
  • YouTube
  • Comment Policy
  • Our Authors
  • Blogroll
  • Our Artists
  • Privacy Policy

Copyright © 2025 Dev Balloon Juice · All Rights Reserved · Powered by BizBudding Inc

Share this ArticleLike this article? Email it to a friend!

Email sent!