Health insurance = good. http://t.co/eUWNcZa9Lo = bad. #GeeksGetCovered using a secure website because we know better.
— Girl Geek Allie (@GirlGeekAllie) March 12, 2014
After spending much of its marketing efforts trying to get Millennials to sign up for Obamacare, the administration is making an interesting last-minute push among a niche group of young people: researchers and entrepreneurs.
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The momentum started earlier this week when the president appeared on Zach Galifianakis’ web show, Between Two Ferns, and the viral video led to a spike in traffic to HealthCare.gov. Then, U.S. Chief Technology Officer Todd Park wrote a blog post on whitehouse.gov “encouraging healthcare enrollment among geeks, innovators, and entrepreneurs.”
The idea behind the appeal to entrepreneurs is that by untethering affordable health coverage from employers, Obamacare will enable more people to venture off and start their own companies. There’s still plenty of debate, though, about whether entrepreneurs and startups are benefitting overall from the Affordable Care Act.
Ryan Panchadsaram, who founded and sold a digital health company called Pipette, then went on to become a Presidential Innovation Fellow for the Blue Button program, appears in the promotional video for #GeeksGetCovered. “Geeks need the freedom and security to keep innovating, and that means not worrying about access to affordable healthcare,” he says.
Interesting that the administration would include “tech entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley” as the target for a social media campaign, considering the long list of tech and security flaws it’s experienced with the website. Some have used the hashtag as an invitation to make that point.
If @WhiteHouse really cared about #GeeksGetCovered, they’d have hired American Geeks to build the website.
— Allie O’Neal (@alliesings) March 12, 2014
The response on social media has been mixed.
Thanks @whitehouseostp @timoreilly I’m a geek I just got covered. http://t.co/GDD2aKI7vA #GeeksGetCovered
— Brian Thopsey (@topCweb) March 12, 2014
Sorry, I’m too busy trying to stay afloat and paying massive amounts of taxes on my nonexistent income. #GeeksGetCovered
— Matthew McMillion (@mlmcmillion) March 13, 2014
[Image credit: Flickr user pdjohnson]
