Abstract
Efforts to expand access to health insurance in the United States are key to addressing health inequities and ensuring that all individuals have access to health care during the coronavirus disease 2019 pandemic. Yet, attempts to expand public insurance programs, including Medicaid, continue to face opposition in state and federal policymaking. Limited policy success raises questions about the health insurance information environment and the extent that available information signals both available resources and the need for policy reform. In this study, we explore one way that consumers and policymakers learn about health insurance—television advertisements—and analyze content in ads that could contribute to an understanding of who needs health insurance or who deserves to benefit from policies to expand insurance access. Specifically, we implement a content analysis of health insurance ads airing throughout 2018 on broadcast television or national cable, focusing on the depictions of people in those ads. Our findings indicate that individuals depicted in ads for Medicaid plans differ from those in ads for non-Medicaid plans. Groups that comprise large populations of current Medicaid enrollees, children and pregnant people, were more likely to appear in ads for non-Medicaid plans than in ads for Medicaid plans. This has implications for potential enrollees' understanding of who is eligible as well as the general public's and policymakers' perspectives on who should be targeted for current or future policies.
Original language | English (US) |
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Pages (from-to) | 336-355 |
Number of pages | 20 |
Journal | World Medical and Health Policy |
Volume | 15 |
Issue number | 4 |
DOIs | |
State | Published - Dec 2023 |
Bibliographical note
Publisher Copyright:© 2022 The Authors. World Medical & Health Policy published by Wiley Periodicals LLC on behalf of Policy Studies Organization.
Keywords
- Medicaid
- health reform
- media
PubMed: MeSH publication types
- Journal Article