Bros and Hos: Obamacare's Bread and Circuses

Liberal marketing gurus here in Colorado are masters of Obamacare distraction. While customers struggle to apply through the still-broken health insurance exchange and consumers grapple with cancellation notices, these hipster ad designers are partying it up. Who cares about the insurance market meltdown? They’ve got keg stands and one-night stands!

The “Got Insurance?” campaign is the lame brainchild of two “progressive” outfits with dubious nonprofit status: ProgressNow and the Colorado Consumer Health Initiative. Their previous claim to fame: a “Thanks, Obamacare” social media movement to propagandize praise and gratitude for the federal mandate.

Modeled after the “Got Milk?” ads, the latest print and web promos pander to young people with pop-culture memes and entitlement-friendly appeals. The dumbed-down website address: doyougotinsurance.com. Last month, while federal and state Obamacare exchange sites 404'ed, the Colorado marketing buffoons LOL'ed. Their “Brosurance” ads featured frat boys with red solo cups guzzling beer, playing golf and celebrating government with a “Thanks, Obamacare!” smile.

ProgressNow’s Alan Franklin boasted about his coverage. Media coverage, that is: “Within the first few weeks, ‘Brosurance’ has been featured by The Wall Street Journal, The Atlantic, CNN, MSNBC, Conan O'Brien, Bill Maher and Roll Call, as well as the front page of Buzzfeed and Jezebel, just to name a few. Just in the first 24 hours of the campaign’s launch alone, #Brosurance was mentioned more than six million times on Twitter, and #GotInsurance more than 1.7 million times. Yes. The ads went viral.” Priorities.

On Tuesday, the groups launched phase two of their Obamacare bread and circuses. Aimed at young women, the ads show party gals with shot glasses lined up on a ski; “Hey, Girl” gags involving a cutout of actor Ryan Gosling; and the Sandra Fluke-inspired promo featuring birth control-wielding “Susie” and her “hot to trot” date, Nate. The caption reads:

“Let’s Get Physical. OMG, he’s hot! Let’s hope he’s as easy to get as this birth control. My health insurance covers the pill, which means all I have to worry about is getting him between the covers. I got insurance. Now you can, too.”

It’s bad enough that these idiocracy-targeted ads reduce young people to perpetually partying boozers and traffic-bait boobs. But what’s truly toxic is the ad campaign’s cynical feint to draw attention away from Obamacare’s undeniable harm to responsible young people. Brosurance and Hosurance are trifling distractions from the federal law’s Nosurance consequences. Insurers started dropping child-only plans in Colorado, California, Ohio and Missouri in 2010 thanks to Obamacare-induced premium increases. Colleges across the country have canceled low-cost plans for students because of Obamacare rules. Thanks to the Obamacare mandate, young, healthy Americans face higher insurance premiums, decreased work hours and perverse incentives to enroll in Medicaid instead of remaining independent and off the dole.

Meanwhile back in Colorado, the state Division of Insurance reports that 250,000 people here have lost their insurance policies in the past few months. And while the “bros and hos” circus masters urge young people to sign up “easily” on the state exchange, the overseers of the $200 million program are singing a different tune. Last week, IT expert and Colorado health insurance exchange board member Nathan Wilkes blasted the process as “painful,” “odious” and “embarrassing.”

That’s an apt description of the ruinous policies, clown implementation and moronic marketing of all aspects of Obamacare. Sober up, young America. The “Affordable Care Act” is the progressives’ wealth redistribution party from hell – and you’re paying for it.

The Patriot Post® · Bros and Hos: Obamacare's Bread and Circuses