Oregon Obamacare Exchange Enrolls 44 People, Spends $300 Million To Do It

The Oregon Obamacare Exchange might want to hire a new marketing team. The organization’s Cover Oregon campaign cost a staggering $300 million, but only managed to enroll 44 people into their program. Millions of dollars were spent on flashy radio and television ads for the Cover Oregon campaign, which featured songs by local musicians promoting the state’s Obamacare exchange. However, the campaign videos failed to mention basic words like “insurance” or how people could enroll in the program.

“We think it’s appropriate to hold off on any further advertising,” said Bruce Goldberg, executive director of Cover Oregon. A spokesman for Cover Oregon said that $8.3 million had been spent on the campaign so far and its budget was doubled last October from $10 million to $21.4 million. But despite the money being spent, the message of what the Obamacare exchange is all about was clearly missed. One of the video spots featured what appeared to be Gumby riding on the Beatles’ yellow submarine, but didn’t explain even the most basic details about the program

It’s not just in Oregon where enrollment numbers are lacking for Obamacare, though. The total number of people signed up for the healthcare plan are roughly 20 percent of what White House officials targeted as a goal. Roughly 100,000 people signed up through healthcare.gov last month, a four-fold increase from October. However, White House officials were hoping to have 500,000 people signed up by now.

A new report from officials earlier this week also claims that 50,000-60,000 paper Obamacare applications have still not been processed. Obama has said the site is still being continually worked on, but the core issues which made it difficult to register this fall have been fixed. (Photo: Cover Oregon)