Illinois, The Onion partner to push health insurance

BY MONIFA THOMAS Staff Reporter

A copy of the Onion is seen in a news rack in San Francisco. | Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

Updated:

Looks like President Barack Obama's health care plan is about to get funnier.

Get Covered Illinois announced a partnership with The Onion on Monday, with a goal of getting young people to sign up for health insurance through the Affordable Care Act.

Illinois says it is the first state to partner with The Onion, which is based in Chicago.

Beginning Monday, the partnership calls for The Onion to run banner ads on its website featuring a man who is forced to sell his action figures to pay his medical bills because he failed to get health coverage. The Onion also will create a video, an editorial and a custom 'news' section about GCI that will appear online as the March 31 enrollment deadline nears.

The Onion audience is comprised of mainly young adults between ages 21 and 34, Get Covered Illinois said. That's the same group the Affordable Care Act is trying to get to buy insurance plans through the law in order to keep the prices of those plans relatively low.

Figures released for the first time by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services showed that buyers in Illinois and nationwide have so far skewed older.

'Reaching the population known as 'Young Invincibles' is an important part of our effort to educate and enroll all of Illinois' uninsured population,' said Jennifer Koehler, executive director of Get Covered Illinois. '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. That's where The Onion fits right into our outreach strategy.'

Steve Hannah, chief executive officer of Onion, Inc., said, '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.'

No information was immediately available about the cost of the partnership.

mjthomas@suntimes.com

Twitter: @MonifaThomas1