We heartily salute Americans for Tax Reform (www.atr.org) for getting up underneath all the verbiage of the Obamacare documents to reveal the top five most-absurd taxpayer-funded plan promotions (and no, we’re not making this up; stay with us, please):
- Coffee-cup sleeves. Oregon may begin printing Obamacare notices on coffee cup sleeves so everyone is aware of the great “opportunity” for higher premiums. “That’s what we’re thinking right now for getting to those hard-to-reach populations,” a spokeswoman for the Oregon Insurance Exchange said. Really, she did say that.
- “Modern Family” plot revisions. California has signed a $900,000 contract with a public relations firm to market the state Obamacare exchange. One proposal is to write about the exchange in plotlines for primetime shows. We always thought our tax dollars somehow ended up in Hollywood; now, we know.
- Airplane banner ads over beaches. Federal dollars provided through exchange grants in Connecticut will pay for beach flyovers advertising Obamacare. Wait! It gets better (or worse, depending on your appetite for sheer idiocy).
- “Get covered” messages on sunscreen containers. Access Health CT, the official state health insurance exchange, will even be at Sailfest, a southeastern Connecticut event that attracts more than 300,000 people annually, to promote the exchange. Thank the Constitution State citizens for paying for that, uh, effort.
- Porta-Potty ads. Washington’s health exchange is promoting itself to young people in the music-loving state with outreach at concerts and music festivals, so why not do a branding exercise in or on the portable bathrooms? Because it, like the rest of the aforementioned, are typically dunderheaded efforts to spread a message no one wants to hear because the creators of the initiative don’t understand it in the first place.
’Merica! Home of the free (for now), and the land of a whole lot of government idiots. (Did you notice, no one is fighting for us and/or for our sanity?)