Why are there Texas Medicaid ads on some SEPTA buses?

Philadelphia isn’t in the Lone Star State, but if you saw the ads for Texas Medicaid on the back of several SEPTA buses, it might have left you wondering.

The ads, which encourage viewers to “Stay covered with Texas Medicaid,” wound up on Philly buses by accident. The ads made their way onto four SEPTA buses, and have since been removed, said Andrew Busch, the agency’s director of media relations.

“It was a mistake in the printing and installation process,” Busch said.

The Texas Health and Human Services Commission, which administers the state’s Medicaid program, did not create or pay for the advertisements that wound up in Philadelphia. The ads, Busch said, were part of a larger campaign that included 60 ads for Pennsylvania Medical Assistance.

The U.S. Centers for Medicare Medicaid Services, a federal agency that works with state governments to manage Medicaid programs, was behind the ads. The correct Pennsylvania ad, which ran on 56 SEPTA buses, is “very similar in terms of design, content, and overall look,” Busch said. That may have created the confusion.

Texas State Rep. Gene Wu weighed in on the situation on the Texas Subreddit, saying that “some states that didn’t have the capacity to run their own campaigns relied on the feds to do theirs.” Texas, he added, created their own campaign, and “the feds asked if they could use Texas’ campaign materials” for other states.

“Apparently, someone in the federal side got bad instructions and just copied the Texas materials verbatim and re-used it in Pennsylvania without considering the context,” Wu said.

Intersection, SEPTA’s advertising agency, learned of the mistake on Wednesday, and removed the incorrect ads, Busch said.