What do you get when Valentine’s Day and Obamacare enrollment coincide? Lots of healthcare-themed valentines.
Using the hashtag #healthpolicyvalentines, health advocates and journalists are trying to outdo each other with tweets tying together romantic messages with topics like insurance enrollment — which ends Sunday — or other parts of the healthcare law. The results are pretty funny.
Like this one from Charles Ornstein: “Open enrollment may close Sunday but our love is forever, babe.” CNN Money writer Tami Luhby tweeted: “My love for you is always auto-reenrolled.” And from Deborah Roseman: “For you, enrollment in my heart will *always* be open.”
Several tweets have to do with one of the most-talked-out parts of the law — its requirement for individuals to buy health coverage or pay a penalty. The Supreme Court upheld that mandate in 2012.
Vox reporter Sarah Kliff tweeted: “My love for you is like the individual mandate penalty: growing every year.”
“I have an individual mandate to go out with you,” wrote Maya Brod.
And then there’s this one, from the Center for Interdisciplinary Health Workforce Studies’ twitter account: “Girl, you must be uninsured because you have fine written all over you.”
There’s a nod to the upcoming King v. Burwell case challenging Obamacare’s insurance subsidies, which is just the latest of a series of high-profile lawsuits against parts of the law.
Health Access California tweeted: “Roses are red, violets are blue, we’ll express our feelings as often as #ACA opponents will sue.”
“Halbig is our love? It’s hard to say, but you’re the King of my heart,” tweeted Adrianna McIntyre.
The valentines aren’t just about the Affordable Care Act, either. Recent outbreaks of infectious diseases like Ebola and measles got plenty of airtime, too.
“No vaccine in the world could make me immune to your love,” Dylan Scott tweeted. The Advisory Board Company’s Dan Diamond wrote: “Hey girl, is your name Ebola? Because your smile is so damn infectious.”
And then some are downright wonky.
“Our propensities matched, may I instrument your variables?,” wrote Farzad Mostashari, former IT coordinator for the Department of Health and Human Services. “Your body has no biosimilars,” wrote Caroline Pearson of Avalere Health.
Atul Grover, chief public policy officer for the Association of American Medical Colleges, tweeted: “You’re my (medical) home” — a reference to innovative payment methods that try to reduce medical waste.
