Obamacare Comedy Not a Laughing Matter

Time is running out for Obamacare enrollment numbers to meet the new March 31 target of 6 million signups. As of this week, only 5 million people have successfully signed up for coverage via the Obamacare exchanges, with the number enrolling per month dropping significantly from over 2 million in December to less than a million in February.

What must be even more worrying to the engineers and champions of Obamacare is the fact that the prime age group of 18-34 year-olds only makes up a quarter of enrollees. According to Businessweek, while a slightly higher proportion of younger people signed up in January and February, those above age 45 still account for 52 percent of total enrollees. The Economist reported that, to “keep rates stable”, the 18-34 year-old crowd must represent 40 percent of Obamacare enrollees.

Simple arithmetic shows that, in order to meet this critical mass of young people and ensure Obamacare’s solvency for the time being, of the remaining million people that need to sign up before this month’s end, 90% of them must be in this age group.

Young people, or “knuckleheads” as First Lady Michelle Obama referred to them, are the most important demographic to Obamacare because they have lower health costs on average and are less likely to use their health care plans. Their premiums subsidize the high healthcare costs accrued by less healthy, older people. However, the much-expected response by young, healthy individuals to the expensive health insurance policies on Obamacare exchanges has been one marked by lack of enthusiasm and reluctance. As US News described it back in October, Obamacare is a “raw deal” for millennials.

In an attempt to remedy this problem, the Obama administration has turned to comedy. Most notably, Obama sat down for a faux interview appearance on comedian and actor Zach Galifianakis’s web series “Between Two Ferns”.

In the midst of the poorly scripted banter, far-flung insults, and cringe-worthy awkwardness, Obama told viewers – presumably the highly coveted young people – to visit Healthcare.gov and sign up for health insurance.

On the first day the video was released it garnered over 15 million views, but only 4 percent of them, or slightly above half a million, clicked through to Healthcare.gov. Given the website’s 5 percent conversion rate of visitors to enrollees, the amount of increased traffic generated by the video could have amounted to potentially 30,000 new enrollees, according to TechCrunch’s calculations. TechCrunch also found that to meet the goal of 1 million more signups by month’s end the administration would need 24 additional as-popular viral videos, or two per day beginning March 16. In short, this video will not jettison Obamacare numbers to the desired levels.

The video’s apparent lack of strategic political purpose and its considerably risqué discourse much-expectedly outraged many on the right. Some like patriotic social conservative Bill O’Reilly claimed the comedic appearance denigrated and mocked the office of presidency. This rapprochement of the President and modern pop culture invited liberal news sites like Huffington Post to deem all conservatives old-fashioned and out-of-touch with today’s youth. As they pointed out, presidents and prominent politicians going back to Eisenhower have trotted out to comedy or late night television shows to project their common-man appeal and give off an air of casualty and lightheartedness. (It can only be hoped that no one actually votes based on these unimportant, manufactured characteristics of candidates.)

Neither side is correct. While there is nothing inherently wrong or distasteful about using comedy in politics, a key difference in Obama’s case was the timing of the appearance. With the recent events concerning Russia and the Ukraine, President and his administration should be castigated for not setting priorities straight.

One cannot help but think that the Obama administration spends more time preparing for these publicity stunts than for foreign policy crises.

What furthermore distinguishes this particular comedic performance from past presidents’ attempts at humor was its the underlying purpose. Instead of turning to comedy to increase his popularity in a bid for election or re-election, Obama is using it to advance his healthcare law. As with the asinine GIFs and memes, the interview skit represents a progressive dumbing-down of the law, the message to enroll, and the youth populace itself. No longer are Obamacare advocates championing its alleged economic and healthcare benefits, they are trying to pass it off as cool because the President “owned” funny-man Galifianakis with witty comebacks.

A law which so fundamentally challenges the core ideals and liberties of this country — currently facing not-so-surprising difficulties in its ultimate quest to redistribute wealth and grow government — is now no longer within the realm of scholarly or intellectual debate. It’s moved onto comedy, and (mostly) bad comedy at that.