Brooklyn commuters encounter ‘broken’ health care system

Subway ads may come and go unnoticed in New York City, but one company is trying to make commuters stop and pay attention at Brooklyn’s busiest transit hub.

City-based Oscar Health, known the past few years for its cartoony and brightly colored ads, has switched gears to a more fact-based, stark campaign that was recently unveiled at the Atlantic Avenue-Barclays Center subway station.

“Healthcare is broken. We’re here to fix it,” one says. “The United States spends more on healthcare than Japan, Germany, France, China, the U.K., Canada, Brazil, Spain and Australia combined,” says another.

“It’s very much in line with what we wanted the company to be and do,” co-founder and CEO Mario Schlosser said of the new approach.

He, Josh Kushner and Kevin Nazemi founded Oscar in 2012, around when Schlosser and his then-pregnant wife were expecting their first child and were “confused with the system. We’ve spent four years trying to build a better health care experience for users,” he said.

The company’s prior campaigns “were approachable and friendly, but they didn’t do justice to the level of care that we have,” Vice President of Marketing Sara Rowghanisaid, adding, “There’s so much jargon, and we’ve found people need more education and content to understand these very important decisions they’re making.”

Like most of the country, Oscar’s CEO is keeping his eyes on the coming election, which has the future of the current health care landscape, among other things, hanging in the balance.

“The number of uninsured is at historical lows, and nobody who gets elected will want to undo that,” Schlosser said.