April 2nd, 2013 – The federal government is embarking on a new marketing program to convince Americans that the Affordable Care Act (ACA, often known as ObamaCare) will make their lives better.
The Department of Health and Human Services’ website showed the results of its marketing analysis which reveals the US population divided up into six distinct groups. The marketing study says that three of groups are critical to the success or failure of the Affordable Care Act.
Those three groups are:
- “Healthy & Young” – 48 percent of the uninsured
- “Sick, Active & Worried” – 29 percent of the uninsured
- “Passive & Unengaged” – 15 percent of the uninsured
The challenge is that for the Affordable Care Act to be economically feasible millions of people from the Healthy & Young and Passive & Unengaged groups must sign up for health insurance to offset the higher costs of covering people with health issues.
According to the study, “The Healthy & Young take good health for granted, are tech-savvy, and have low motivation to enroll. The Passive & Unengaged group is mostly 49 and older, “lives for today,” and doesn’t understand much about health insurance.”
The major tenants of the ACA go into effect on January 1st, 2014. That’s also when the law that requires Americans to carry health insurance goes into force. Insurance companies will then also be barred from denying people coverage based on pre-existing conditions.
Today, Vermont became the first state to post it’s health insurance rates, which ranged from “an average high of about $1,700 a month for a family to an average of $745 for catastrophic coverage — only available to people under age 30 — for a family.” Hopefully, Colorado’s rates will be substantially less than Vermont’s.
