It’s time for affordable, quality and innovative solutions to health care

When my boys were still young, getting them to bed was sometimes a frustrating struggle. My husband and I would keep saying, “It’s time for bed….It’s time!” and sometimes the kids just wouldn’t listen.

“It’s time…” can be a mantra of frustration for any parent: It’s time for school…It’s time to straighten your room…It’s time to do your homework.

When I go around the Commonwealth and listen to people talk about their health care situation, they tell me that it’s time for health insurance to be simpler.  It’s time for responsive and compassionate customer service. It’s time for better and easier access to physicians and other health care providers.  It’s time for some innovation and some flexibility.

I’m writing to tell you that the time is now.

As those who regularly follow my blog know, over the past few years UnitedHealthcare has beefed up our already strong network of providers across Pennsylvania and used technology to improve our already award-winning customer service. We’ve added a mind-boggling array of online tools and smartphone apps that help consumers select physicians, evaluate the costs of treatment, gather tips for keeping themselves and their family well, and track their physician visits and health care costs.

We’ve also introduced a number of innovative health plans, like Multi-Choice, which gives employees of small businesses up to 30 different plans from which to select while capping costs for the employer.  And now it’s time to shout it out to the world, which is what we’re doing in our new statewide ad campaign, “It’s time.”

We’re launching the campaign now because for many employees and businesses it’s the time of the year for evaluating their health care insurance plans.  

Our ads, which you can see on buses or bus shelter boards and hear on most radio stations, turn the frustration of the “It’s time” mantra into a positive happy decision to take control of health care and health care costs.  When it comes to considering their choices during open enrollment, I want people to say, “It’s time” with a smile on their face, like “It’s time to go on vacation” or “It’s time to enjoy the weekend.”

Every ad has a call to action and the call to action of our new ads is to visit a website that has been localized to meet the specific needs and concerns of folks in different regions of Pennsylvania, like www.uhctogether.com/pittsburgh/index.html or www.uhctogether.com/philly/index.html.  At the website, you can click through to webpages to learn about our innovations, hear testimonials from physicians and consumers, get information about preventive care, go to a special website focused on women’s issues and watch UHC.TV, the first online television network with health and wellness related content.

The basic message of our “It’s time” ad campaign is simple: It’s time for affordable, quality and innovative solutions to health care and that’s what people will get by switching to UnitedHealthcare.

Now it’s time for me to get back to my day job.  And I say it with a huge smile on my face, because I love working with my UHC colleagues at our 14 offices across Pennsylvania who collaborate with the 223 hospitals and more than 30,000 health care providers located in the Keystone State to make sure that the almost one million Pennsylvanians covered by UnitedHealthcare get the affordable quality health care they need.