Politics

As Obamacare exchanges open, Hollywood campaigns to enroll younger people

Katie McHugh Associate Editor
Font Size:

The Hollywood humor site “Funny or Die” is rolling out an extended campaign to encourage young people to enroll in Obamacare exchanges beginning on Monday, joining a slew of celebrities doing their best to convince the demographic upon which the program depends to ignore their economic interests and shoulder the cost of older Americans’ health care.

The studio’s first video, seemingly meant to remind the “young invincible” demographic of 18 to 35-year olds that freak accidents and grave injuries can befall them at anytime, depicts “a little girl tumbling head-first off her rocking horse, a skateboarder’s ill-fated trick, a boy attempting a jump on his bike and ending up limp on the asphalt,” according to The Chicago Tribune, which viewed a secret preview of the propaganda campaign on Sept. 20.

“Valerie Jarrett loved this video,” said “Funny or Die” production president Mike Farah, speaking of the the Secret Service protectee who is President Barack Obama’s closest senior adviser.

Farah, who is pictured smiling and wearing a casual, checkered shirt and jeans, worked with administration officials for months on a marketing plan to promote the transformative overhaul of the U.S. health care system, finally meeting with Obama and several other celebrities — including Amy Poehler, Michael Cera and Jennifer Hudson — in the Roosevelt Room of the White House in July.

Farah offered to use his firm’s resources, otherwise used to generate profits and please customers, to do the legwork for a health care law that will wipe out the existing plans of 58,000 residents of the studio’s home state of California.

“The simplest way to put it was, they had spent all this time and energy and money on the biggest movie of their lives and had no marketing budget in which to promote it,” Farah said. “I just thought that was the craziest thing I’d ever heard.”

It is unclear what health care policy expertise Farah or 25-year-old celebrity Michael Cera, actor and “occasional musician,” possess or how they will convince young Americans to ignore their economic self interest and enroll themselves in the costly exchanges. A study conducted by the National Center for Public Policy Research discovered that the millions of young, childless and single adults — on which the program depends to subsidize the immense cost of caring for aging, ailing Americans — could save a significant sum of $500 by paying a penalty and forgoing insurance. The Center also found that taxpayer subsidies meant to offset the prohibitive cost of enrollment vanish for any younger person making more than $34,470 annually, far below the promised $45,960.

These perverse incentives posed to this key demographic could spell trouble for Obamacare’s success.

“This demographic is critical. If you mostly have high-risk people, premiums go up. It becomes a death spiral,” Caroline Pearson, a vice president at Washington-based consulting firm Avalere Health LLC, told Bloomberg.

Unexciting research reports struggle to compete with the glamorous alliance between the Obama administration and Hollywood. Back in August, singer Katy Perry retweeted a message from Obama’s Twitter feed reminding young people to enroll in the exchanges on October 1. 

Obama’s Twitter feed enthusiastically retweeted Perry’s retweet to millions of followers, thus confirming their social media BFF status.

All of Hollywood’s and the White House’s efforts to launch Obamacare and keep it running smoothly may be in vain if the White House and its Hollywood allies fail to convince enough young people to enroll, however. To some, that may have been the plan all along. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said in August that the U.S. must eventually “work [its] way past” an insurance-based system, and Obamacare is only the first step towards a national single-payer health care system.

Farah plans to produce 20 videos to promote Obamacare throughout 2013.

Follow Katie on Twitter

Tags : obamacare
Katie McHugh

PREMIUM ARTICLE: Subscribe To Keep Reading

Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!

Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!

Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!

Sign Up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
BENEFITS READERS PASS PATRIOTS FOUNDERS
Daily and Breaking Newsletters
Daily Caller Shows
Ad Free Experience
Exclusive Articles
Custom Newsletters
Editor Daily Rundown
Behind The Scenes Coverage
Award Winning Documentaries
Patriot War Room
Patriot Live Chat
Exclusive Events
Gold Membership Card
Tucker Mug

What does Founders Club include?

Tucker Mug and Membership Card
Founders

Readers,

Instead of sucking up to the political and corporate powers that dominate America, The Daily Caller is fighting for you — our readers. We humbly ask you to consider joining us in this fight.

Now that millions of readers are rejecting the increasingly biased and even corrupt corporate media and joining us daily, there are powerful forces lined up to stop us: the old guard of the news media hopes to marginalize us; the big corporate ad agencies want to deprive us of revenue and put us out of business; senators threaten to have our reporters arrested for asking simple questions; the big tech platforms want to limit our ability to communicate with you; and the political party establishments feel threatened by our independence.

We don't complain -- we can't stand complainers -- but we do call it how we see it. We have a fight on our hands, and it's intense. We need your help to smash through the big tech, big media and big government blockade.

We're the insurgent outsiders for a reason: our deep-dive investigations hold the powerful to account. Our original videos undermine their narratives on a daily basis. Even our insistence on having fun infuriates them -- because we won’t bend the knee to political correctness.

One reason we stand apart is because we are not afraid to say we love America. We love her with every fiber of our being, and we think she's worth saving from today’s craziness.

Help us save her.

A second reason we stand out is the sheer number of honest responsible reporters we have helped train. We have trained so many solid reporters that they now hold prominent positions at publications across the political spectrum. Hear a rare reasonable voice at a place like CNN? There’s a good chance they were trained at Daily Caller. Same goes for the numerous Daily Caller alumni dominating the news coverage at outlets such as Fox News, Newsmax, Daily Wire and many others.

Simply put, America needs solid reporters fighting to tell the truth or we will never have honest elections or a fair system. We are working tirelessly to make that happen and we are making a difference.

Since 2010, The Daily Caller has grown immensely. We're in the halls of Congress. We're in the Oval Office. And we're in up to 20 million homes every single month. That's 20 million Americans like you who are impossible to ignore.

We can overcome the forces lined up against all of us. This is an important mission but we can’t do it unless you — the everyday Americans forgotten by the establishment — have our back.

Please consider becoming a Daily Caller Patriot today, and help us keep doing work that holds politicians, corporations and other leaders accountable. Help us thumb our noses at political correctness. Help us train a new generation of news reporters who will actually tell the truth. And help us remind Americans everywhere that there are millions of us who remain clear-eyed about our country's greatness.

In return for membership, Daily Caller Patriots will be able to read The Daily Caller without any of the ads that we have long used to support our mission. We know the ads drive you crazy. They drive us crazy too. But we need revenue to keep the fight going. If you join us, we will cut out the ads for you and put every Lincoln-headed cent we earn into amplifying our voice, training even more solid reporters, and giving you the ad-free experience and lightning fast website you deserve.

Patriots will also be eligible for Patriots Only content, newsletters, chats and live events with our reporters and editors. It's simple: welcome us into your lives, and we'll welcome you into ours.

We can save America together.

Become a Daily Caller Patriot today.

Signature

Neil Patel