Quinn teams up with The Onion to pitch ObamaCare
In an 11th hour enrollment push, Gov. Pat Quinn is teaming up with the folks who bring you the satirical news site, The Onion. The idea is to create an action figure banner ad campaign to encourage young people to sign up for health care coverage under the Affordable Care Act, commonly referred to as...
In an 11th hour enrollment push, Gov. Pat Quinn is teaming up with the folks who bring you the satirical news site, The Onion. The idea is to create an action figure banner ad campaign to encourage young people to sign up for health care coverage under the Affordable Care Act, commonly referred to as ObamaCare.
There have already been numerous failed attempts to appeal to the highly coveted “young invincibles.” From the ill-conceived Health and Human Services video contest to Colorado’s cringeworthy Brosurance to the widely mocked pajama boy, we should, perhaps, be grateful that Quinn’s attempt will likely be quickly forgotten in the parade of ObamaCare’s PR failures.
But this failure has nothing to do with a lack of media glitz. Instead, it has everything to do with the fact that young people are rational: They understand that ObamaCare is a bad deal for too many of them.
The “young invincibles,” ages 18 to 34, make up just less than one-quarter of the ObamaCare “enrollments” in Illinois. That is far short of the 38 percent target the administration needs to balance out the older and sicker patients in the insurance risk pool. If they don’t, the risk pool will be dominated by the older and sicker individuals. As a result, premiums will necessarily rise – by a lot.
This destroys the basis of the risk pool, leaving much higher prices and even more incentive for the healthy to leave the risk pool, meaning only the oldest and sickest would remain in the risk pool as premiums skyrocket – driving premiums even higher.
What Quinn fails to realize that young invincibles are not going to be swayed by gimmicks and slick ads. Faced with the prospects of high premiums, high deductibles and policies larded up with unnecessary benefits, many young invincibles do not see the value in buying policies that don’t meet their individual needs and preferences – especially at an inflated price. An action figure is not going to change that reality.