At long last. After weeks of unrelenting bad news, Obamacare supporters in the mainstream media believe the cavalry has come to the rescue in the form of increased advertising buys by insurance companies. Huh? How does increased ad buys translate into Obamacare success? Well, the talking point now being recited is that the promised increase in advertising by the insurance companies translates into their confidence in Obamacare which somehow means it's going to work.
Paul Krugman, who a couple of months ago was celebrating the "success" of Obamacare based on discovering one person in New Jersey who signed up, is now in a similar state of bliss because "The Big Money Bets on Obamacare":
So the shoe we’ve all been waiting to see drop — or not — was the surge of advertising urging people buying insurance through the exchanges to buy from me, me, me.
That shoe has just dropped, with $500 million of advertising spending now in the pipeline. Insurers think this is going to work.
Yeah, it hasn't actually happened but it is in the "pipeline" to buy from me, me, me. And of course, this latest talking point was recited by others in the MSM such as Greg Sargent providing his Washington Post echo even down to the title "Insurance industry bets on Obamacare. GOP bets on failure":
I’ve expected this for some time, and here it is: The Wall Street Journal reports that insurance companies are set to unleash hundreds of millions of dollars in advertising to entice potential customers on to the exchanges created by Obamacare.
Got that? The insurance companies are "set to unleash" hundreds of millions of advertising dollars. It hasn't happened yet but they are "set to unleash." When? In 24 business hours?
Sargent's Washington Post colleagues, Ezra Klein and Evan Soltas, also chime in with the insurance ad buy talking point prayer:
...According to trade association TVB, insurers will spend more than $500 million on local television ads in 2014. And that's to say nothing of cable television ads and social media campaigns.
Insurers look at these next few years as a gold rush. Tens of millions of people will be buying private insurance of the exchanges. It's a swarm of customers like nothing they've ever seen. And they plan to capture them — even if they need to spend hundreds of millions of dollars to do so.
Perhaps we should wait to see how much advertising money is actually spent rather than is promised to be spent. After all, last summer it was hopefully speculated that the insurance companies would spend (channeling Dr. Evil) ONE BILLION DOLLARS on advertising:
...Obamacare could generate as much as $100 billion in new business in 2014 for the insurance companies. If they allocate just 1% of that anticipated revenue for paid media, they will spend a extra $1 billion on them.
Apparently that one billion dollars has now been discounted down to five hundred million bucks and it remains to be seen how much is actually spent in the non-fantasy world. Meanwhile the MSM liberals continue to pray to their insurance company Blue Fairy to sprinkle ad buy pixie dust and perform a miracle to make Obamacare work.
