Obamacare Allies Scramble to Save Face with Younger Voters
By, Alex Smith
Don’t let the holidays lure you into a false sense of security; the fight for the youth vote in 2014 and 2016 has already begun.
Check out this article (above) featured in the December issue of Cosmopolitan Magazine, “So, Where’s the Free Birth Control?" You’ll find it quietly placed among advertisements for makeup and an interview with Miley Cyrus.
It begins with a 24-year old "confused” about being charged more for a particular brand of birth control, especially because “it had been more than one year since the Affordable Care Act required insurers to make contraception free.”
The article then breathlessly attempts to explain, quoting from an official at America’s Health Insurance Plans (AHIP), a group that not only serves as a powerful financial supporter of President Obama, but is also the lobbying arm responsible for the inclusion of the individual mandate in the health care law: “…there are dozens of scenarios that nobody envisioned when the law was passed." (Hint: reading the bill to find out what was in it, rather than passing it to do so might have cleared up this confusion, but I digress).
The piece then goes on to list various workarounds for different scenarios one seeking free birth control might face (complete with paraphrasing from yours truly):
- "When Your Brand Isn’t Covered” - The Cosmo solution? Ask your doctor – whether it’s true or not – to submit a claim that the brand is medically necessary. Sure, let’s invite fraud and misrepresentation into an already crippled health care system. That should do wonders to keep health care costs low.
- “When Your Boss Objects” - “Unfortunately,” (emphasis added) Cosmo laments, employers who have pesky religious objections to covering birth control in their insurance plans, are winning lower court contests on the issue. No worries, Cosmo Girl, the article continues; if we can’t manage to destroy your employer’s First Amendment free exercise rights at the Supreme Court, you can always get your freebies at Planned Parenthood.
- “When You’re Using Student Health” - An exasperated Cosmo singles out Catholic schools as an example of this potential obstacle. You’re in luck, though! “If your student plan isn’t ponying up, you can opt out of your school’s policy and either join your parents’ plan (if you are under age 26) or sign up for coverage at HealthCare.gov." So now, fun, fearless female, you can continue to live off of your parents (God knows you’re not getting a job in the Obama economy) or use a website that was engineered with the same level of brilliance as that of the Titanic. GREAT!
- "When Your Plan Won’t Pay” - Demonstrating the Administration’s love/hate relationship with insurance companies, the article directs you to complain to your insurance company if you’re getting charged too much. After all, “insurance companies do that kind of thing,” the article snidely concludes.
Let’s talk about what you don’t find in this article.
You don’t find that the website–healthcare.gov–that the reader is twice directed to visit is completely inoperable. You also aren’t told that President Obama has failed to hold anyone in the Executive Branch accountable for this unmitigated disaster. (Rest assured, good Americans; only people who disagree with his handling of the failed rollout get fired.)
The article fails to mention to its thousands of millennial readers that they can expect to see their premiums soar, as the President for whom they so fervently supported is using them to pay for older and sicker Americans. If you are a young person, who carefully selected your own health care on an individual plan that the Administration now derides as “junk,” nowhere are you told that you can now expect a cancellation notice, despite the President’s promise that “if you like your plan, you can keep it.”
But most importantly, you’ll be hard-pressed to find the fact that the employees, family members and PACs of Hearst Corporation, the publisher of Cosmopolitan Magazine, has given over $54,000 in political contributions to President Obama.
Stories about the President’s health care plan are undoubtedly infuriating, but the real call to action from this article is the need for Republican candidates and campaigns to focus on targeting young people in the language and the channels that they use. Cosmopolitan Magazine has a national circulation of over 3 million, and is the best-selling magazine on college campuses. As the CRNC’s 2013 research report “Grand Old Party for a Brand New Generation” describes, ceding ground to the left in spaces where Republicans haven’t been as adept (i.e. online, campuses, minority communities, etc.) has only lead to the success of the other side in being able to negatively define us.
The CRNC has already started to experiment with new messages and media. For example, our organization played an integral role in winning 18-24 year olds for Republican candidate Ken Cuccinelli through a calculated messaging strategy aimed at young female voters. Despite losing voters under 40 overall, Cuccinelli managed to win 18-24 year olds by 6 points. The CRNC ran a 60-second ad exclusively online throughout the month of October opposing Democratic candidate Terry McAuliffe. The ad targeted females 18-24 years old, with whom, as polls indicated, Cuccinelli had been underperforming. The ad was based on the MTV television show, “Catfish,” which is particularly popular with young females in Virginia. The 1.5 million impressions the CRNC purchased were favorably received online, with more than half of some audiences watching the video in its entirety. In both content and form, the ad followed a key recommendation from our research report: speak to younger voters in both relevant language and channels. The CRNC was the only Republican organization to target this key demographic in this manner, the success of which may serve as a blueprint for future campaigns.
