While we realize that newsflow over the past few years has taken a decided turn for the surreal, we are sad (or, alternatively, delighted) to announce that we are dead serious when we report that Illinois governor Pat Quinn has now tapped The Onion - that would be the famous satiric website - to sell Obamacare. Perhaps we should not be surprised: after we previously revealed that The Onion served as the mystery [8]source of economic insight by such intellectual economist titans as Paul Krugman and Larry Summers, the time may have come come to surrender to the great wave of absurdity that has washed over this nation, and admit that when it comes to pitching idiotic policies, self-referential satire may be the only option left in the arsenal of the central planners.
Acording to Crains Chicago [9], Gov. Pat Quinn is partnering with the Onion to persuade young invincibles” to sign up for health care insurance — before it's too late under Obamacare.
More on this surreal development from the source [9]:
Beginning today, Onion Labs, the creative services division of Chicago-based Onion, will run banners ads on its website of a man forced to sell his action figures to pay his medical bills because he didn't buy health insurance, according to a statement today from Get Covered Illinois [10], the state's health insurance exchange.
[11]
So-called young invincibles, healthy people in their 20s and 30s, are crucial to balancing out the costly sick and elderly people buying plans on the Illinois health insurance exchange.
“We know that to effectively reach Young Invincibles — who are 53 percent of our uninsured residents in Illinois — we have to work with non-traditional, and especially digital, sources for news and entertainment," Jennifer Koehler, executive director of Get Covered Illinois, said in statement. "That's where the Onion fits right into our outreach strategy.”
The Onion also will create a video, an editorial and a customer “news” section about Get Covered Illinois that will appear online as the March 31 deadline to buy health insurance approaches.
“This is a great opportunity for Onion Labs to work with Get Covered Illinois, and do what the Onion does best — create irreverent-yet-relevant comedy and put it to work for an organization that wants to reach millennials,” Onion CEO Steve Hannah said in the statement.
Actually what the Onion does best is to capture the idiocy of people through the lens of stires. In this case, it has most certainly succeeded.