Healthcare.gov is making a full court marketing press to get more uninsured millennials to sign up for health insurance.
This morning the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services, which oversees and operates Healthcaregov.com, unveiled plans to coax more millennials, consumers 18 to 35, to sign up for health insurance online when benefits enrollment begins Nov. 1.
Healthcare.gov is using a big dose of social media to attract millennials, a consumer group with one of the highest uninsured rates. For example Healthcare.gov is working with Twitch, a social video platform and community for gamers with 9.7 million daily active users. Healthcare.gov and Twitch will launch a series of marketing campaigns including video ads and related tactics to attract more of Twitch’s core 18-to-34 users to sign up for health insurance on the government marketplace.
Healthcare.gov also is working with various social media companies and consumer organizations including National Council of LaRaze, National Action Network, March of Dimes, Planned Parenthood Federation of America, Tumblr, My Hala Kitchen and Autism Speaks on a social media education campaign called “#HealthAudulting.”
Each group, including Planned Parenthood with 837,000 followers on Facebook and My Hala Kitchen with 1.3 million Facebook followers, will conduct live chats, post videos and use other campaigns under #HealthAudulting to educate younger consumers on how to research and buy health insurance.
The healthcare uninsured rate among consumers ages 18-34 has declined from 23% in 2013 to 11% in 2016, says the Transamerica Center for Health Studies.
But millennials are still more likely to be uninsured than older consumers, says Healthcare.gov CEO Kevin Counihan. “Young adults had the highest uninsured rates before the Affordable Care Act and have seen the sharpest drop in uninsured rates since 2010,” Counihan says. “Yet millions of young adults remain uninsured, showing that there is more work to do to equip younger Americans with the tools and information they need to access coverage through the marketplace.”
Many millennials have avoided signing up for health insurance because of high deductibles and co-payments, Counihan says.
In addition to working with Twitch, Healthcare.gov has been retooled to make it easier to use a smartphone or tablet to research and buy coverage online. Better navigation and design include a new vertical page layout that makes reading text easier, one-finger motion has been added for easier scrolling and to allow a user to scroll up down a mobile screen to view plan information.
“Last year, consumers could easily enroll in coverage at Healthcare.gov through mobile devices, but if they wanted to actually shop around and compare plans, the mobile interface could be difficult and time-consuming,” Counihan says. “This year, rather than clicking on tiny boxes or zooming in on hard-to-read screens, consumers will now find intuitive navigation and a streamlined interface to compare plans.”
Last year millennials made up 28%, or 2.7 million, of the 9.6 million consumers that signed up for health insurance for the first time or renewed their coverage on Healthcare.gov, says the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services.
“Nine in 10 marketplace-eligible young adults without health insurance have incomes that could qualify them for tax credits to make plans affordable, but that fact hasn’t fully penetrated the millennial community, and we want to change that,” Counihan says. “This year, we’ll be using new tactics and strategies to reach young adults where they are and deliver the message that they have affordable coverage options.”
Date: September 29, 2016