You never need health insurance until you need it, according to the most recent Funny or Die video promoting Obamacare. And the video, just one of website’s ads for the Affordable Care Act, comes on the heels of news that youth enrollment is failing to meet expectations.
The video, which stars actress Aisha Tyler, attempts to prove to Millennials that they should sign up for health insurance when they’re healthy so it’s there when they suffer an injury. To prove that going uninsured isn’t a wise choice, Tyler, currently host of Whose Line Is It Anyway?, takes a massive football hit while not wearing pads and enters the boxing ring without a mouthguard — only to spit out a tooth after taking a punch to the face.
In the first Funny or Die Obamacare video, Jennifer Hudson starred as an Olivia Pope character dubbed ‘The Fixer’. But instead of solving Washington scandals, she ended up helping people get health coverage. And the second video was a compilation of painful-looking fails worthy of America’s Funniest Home Videos.
While the videos are clever, they don’t seem to be convincing many young people they need to sign up for Obamacare, as the data from the end of December shows.
Only 24 percent of Obamacare enrollees are between the ages of 18 and 34, according to the Department of Health and Human Services. This falls short of the 40 percent the Obama administration set as the target for youth enrollment. Putting it into perspective another way, only 489,460 young people were signed up at the end of 2013. The administration is aiming for 2.7 million young enrollees by the end of March, when the open enrollment period closes.
That means Funny or Die and the White House have less than two and a half months left to enroll more than 2 million young people. Maybe they better hurry up and make more videos.
Watch the ad below:
