Celebrities and word-of-mouth push exchange plans

The administration’s overall goal was to sign up 7 million people by next March 31, when open enrollment ends. People face a Dec. 23 deadline to sign up if they are to have coverage by New Year’s.

California, the nation’s most populous state with about 38 million residents, runs its own exchange and led the nation with 107,087 sign-ups.

The “Tell a Friend” campaign’s concept borrows from basic political thinking — an individual is more likely to be convinced to make a decision by a trusted family member or friend, rather than a droning TV ad or a stranger knocking at the door.

To get the chatter going, organizers that include other health exchanges will lean heavily on celebrity endorsements, online videos and Internet traffic. For example, Maroon 5 singer Adam Levine, People magazine’s “sexiest man alive” for 2013, urged his followers on Twitter to get coverage.

Since launching the exchange program, the White House has benefited from celebrity support as it attempts to draw a crowd — Amy Poehler and Lady Gaga are among the actors, comedians and musicians who have pushed the overhaul.

Largely at issue is luring young, healthy people needed to make the exchange program and new underwriting rules for all individual and small-group health insurance products financially viable. Premiums paid by the younger and healthier group, between 18 and 35, are needed by insurance companies to offset the cost of carrying older and sicker customers, who are more likely run up high medical bills.

Lee said Covered California will absorb most of the campaign’s expenses, although the total has not been finalized. He estimated it would amount to a small fraction of the agency’s marketing budget; Covered California expects to spend over $200 million on television and online ads, billboards, door-to-door visits and other sales pitches and promotions to convince people to enroll.

The campaign’s website features videos, aimed at younger adults, that urge individuals to seek coverage.

In one, a mountain biker is seen crashing on a trail, then clutching his arm. The Obama impersonator, actor Iman Crosson, raps in the video, “If you choose it, just use it, they can’t refuse it, no pre-existing condition could ever make you lose it.” Both videos rely on generalities about the law, and neither mentions specifics about the cost.

See also:

• Wellmark uses HealthCare.gov humor in new ads
• PPACA ad blitz begins
• Oregon exchange puts folk singers on TV