http://dailycaller.com/2013/11/05/administration-will-launch-campaign-to-get-young-people-into-exchanges/Administration will launch campaign to get young people into exchanges
Posted By Alexis Levinson On 11:50 AM 11/05/2013
The administration will spend December through March on a campaign to encourage people to enroll in the health-care exchanges, specifically targeting young people and the uninsured.
On Tuesday, the Wall Street Journal reported that the average age of enrollees in the insurance exchanges has thus far been older than hoped. If younger, healthier people do not begin signing up, prices could in fact go up for everyone enrolled.
Testifying before the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services administrator Marilyn Tavenner said that the administration would seek to remedy that as soon as the HealthCare.gov website is fully fixed.
Tavenner said that through the end of November, the focus would be on getting the website fully up and running, without any of the bugs or glitches that have plagued people trying to use it over the past month.
“Based on our analysis we will have it fully functioning by the end of November,” Tavenner said.
After that, she said, the focus will turn to a campaign to reach out to potential consumers. Under questioning from Maryland Democratic Sen. Barbara Mikulski about how they would get more young people enrolled, Tavenner said the agency would present that plan in several weeks.
She declined to specify details on the plan, but said that it would be “a combination of media — both television, radio, and some print.”
The campaign, she said, would run through “December, January, February and March,” and that it would focus on specific markets. She did not specify what those markets would be.
The marketing effort will target people in states that have not set up their own exchanges, where the federal government is responsible for running the exchanges. States that have set up their own exchanges, Tavenner said, will be responsible for their own marketing.
