Panicked by the fact that young people are not enrolling in Obamacare in the numbers needed to sustain the system, District of Columbia officials are appearing at two Footlocker stores and two Denny’s restaurants to collar the young people while they shop and eat.
On Saturday, while the Footlocker stores were offering the new Nike-exclusive Air Jordan 12 “Taxi” sneakers, recruiters showed up to buttonhole young shoppers. They planned to visit the two Denny’s from 2 a.m. to 4 p.m. Sunday to answer questions and enroll their target audience.
D.C. Health Links representative Vanessa Brooks boasted to Fox News outside a Footlocker, “My motto is ‘Get them health care while you get them Jordans.'” She later told those lined up for the shoes, “Get some health care to go along with them Taxis, OK? You got to have it. And you need it.”
Obamacare’s success requires a disproportionate number of healthy young people to buy health insurance so their premiums can support the elderly and others who stand more in need of care. Brooks and other D.C. Health Link officials call the targeted young people “young invincibles.”
However, those “young invincibles” seem to be resisting the push because of the failed Obamacare rollout and their natural suspicions that the system is not designed to work out in their favor.
In California, which has the most uninsured individuals of any state, most people applying for Obamacare are older citizens with health issues. In Kentucky, almost 75% of enrollees were over 35.
Obamacare officials are rushing because those eligible to enroll only have until March 31, 2014, to buy an insurance policy using the health exchanges. Moreover, if they want to be insured by January 1, they must enroll before December 23.
The Department of Health and Human Services admitted that by November 30, only 364,682 people had signed up for private coverage under the Affordable Care Act, as opposed to the 1.2 million they thought would sign up by that date.
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