One week ago, you may have been perusing your Twitter or Facebook newsfeed when all of a sudden, social media networks were dominated with reactions to the Supreme Court ruling regarding President Obama’s Affordable Care Act.
Social media analysis firm Crimson Hexagon took a look at about 130,000 Obamacare-related tweets posted last Thursday. Its analysis showed that 48 percent of those tweets were in support of the Affordable Care Act, 29 percent of tweets called for its repeal while 22 percent were party-neutral, just spreading the news of the court’s decision.
The ruling sparked 13,000 tweets per minute. Popular trending topics included #SCOTUS, #ObamaCare, #ACA, #HealthCare and #HCR. Republicans and conservatives used hashtags such as #FullRepeal, #Obamatax and #ObamacareInThreeWords as Democrats and liberals answered with #ACA and links to YouTube videos arguing that the bill has made life easier for many Americans.
For Mitt Romney, the response was more than just tweets and Facebook posts. The candidate’s campaign raised $4.6 million in 24 hours through more than 47,000 online donations.
Based on Google Search traffic from 7:00 a.m. to 11:00 a.m., the top five rising search terms in Google with interest in SCOTUS healthcare decision were Justice Roberts, John Roberts, individual mandate, mandate and SCOTUS.
As of now, it looks like all of us are going to have health insurance, whether we like it or not. Don’t you wish there was a way to help manage, organize and understand health insurance? There are apps for that!
Simplee’s mission is to help users understand and manage healthcare expenses. It was designed to solve the most common healthcare frustrations, from understanding your healthcare plans to paying your medical bills. It aims to empower users with tools and insights to optimize healthcare benefits and lower healthcare costs. The app allows you to personalize a home page, check for messages, view a medical bill in detail, view medical expenses over time and make payments.
- Fidelity Health & Insurance
Fidelity Investments launched a mobile app earlier this year that helps its 1.2 million welfare and health plan members access their health benefits from their mobile devices. The app includes coverage information, provider data, copayments and contact numbers, all of which the company characterizes as standard fare. Users get a complete view of the health and insurance plans they’re enrolled in, such as medical, dental or vision, quick, on-the-go access to your medical coverage card and the ability to share content via e-mail, detailed plain information, in- and out-of-network cost, coverage information and important provider contacts and convenient pharmacy locator to make filling and picking up prescriptions easier than ever.
The free app is available to both members associated with any of the 39 independent Blue Cross and Blue Shield companies as well as non-members. It has a provider finder where you can find the nearest urgent care centers, doctors and hospitals. You can access your member ID card, view your health plan, claims you’ve made and access health and wellness information. The mobile app allows for the user profile to be edited and you can contact customer service instantly.
The app includes nutrition information on more than 100,000 products, and users can search for food products and build healthy grocery lists and share via e-mail. You can also search for an in-network doctor on the go.
Other insurance companies with mobile apps include United Healthcare, Aetna and Humana. TechCrunch explored three free healthcare apps that empower patients for cancer, pregnancy and diabetes. There are plenty of other health-related apps to either help you manage and understand health insurance or even work on achieving a healthy lifestyle.
Edited by
Rich Steeves
