Illinois partners with The Onion to push ObamaCare

Sept. 7, 2013: Get Covered America buttons are seen during a training session in Chicago, Illinois before volunteers canvas a Chicago neighborhood to talk with residents about the Affordable Care Act . (Reuters)

Illinois is turning it’s ObamaCare sales pitch into a joke.

To get more people to sign up for health care, the state is bragging it will spend $150,000 on ads for the satirical news site The Onion.

“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,” Jennifer Koehler, executive director of Get Covered Illinois said in a news release.

Neither Koehler nor anyone at Get Covered Illinois responded to Illinois Watchdog’s request for an interview.

Koehler’s statement said the partnership will focus on fake headlines and fake news stories about someone forced to sell their action figures to pay medical bills.

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