My must read of the day is "What do Adam Levine and Wilmer Valderrama have in common? ObamaCare," in Fox News:
ObamaCare is the sexiest health care exchange alive?
That may be what the Obama administration is trying to get across by hiring People magazine’s Sexiest Man Alive, singer Adam Levine, to help promote its beleaguered online health insurance exchange. […]
"The idea is a drumbeat of dialogue, a drumbeat of discussion about coverage -- not about glitches, not about the politics, not about the pundits," Peter Lee, executive director of Covered California, which led organization of the campaign, told Bloomberg News.
"We don’t think that, by seeing a tweet, suddenly millions of people will go get coverage," Anne Filipic, president of Enroll America, an independent advocacy group, told the news service. "Adam Levine’s tweet helps us begin, and then we can have a substantive conservation about what’s available."
Starting today, Adam Levine is reported to be the biggest A-list celebrity tasked with convincing you to "get covered."
It’s a hurried effort to make a reality the administration’s projected enrollment surge in December and March, and the White House is clearly targeting a specific demographic: young people. Young people are the most important people for the Affordable Care Act, and they are not signing up and increasingly disapprove of the law.
The administration has not yet released the demographic breakdown of their enrollment figures, but some state exchanges have, and the numbers aren’t good. California reported that 23 percent of signups were 18 to 34 year olds. That is a significantly lower percentage than what the administration has projected as necessary for the law to work.
It’s not surprising this administration would use celebrities to sell health care. Health insurance is after all a product, and a celebrity endorsement is often an effective tool to influence purchases. Like all products, though, there’s a cost to buy it, and it’s a large cost.