Making Sure Healthcare Reaches the Young Invincibles

Rory O’Sullivan is the Deputy Director at Young Invincibles where he directs the organization’s policy and advocacy strategy. He has expertise in issues impacting young adults including federal financial aid, skills acquisition, youth employment, and health insurance coverage. Rory serves on the Board of Directors for the Campaign for College Opportunity. He was also the student negotiator for the Department of Education’s 2013 negotiated rulemaking on the gainful employment regulations. He holds a B.A. in Philosophy, Politics, and Economics from Pomona College and a joint J.D./M.P.P. from Georgetown University.

In the recent push to enroll young adults in health insurance, Young Invincibles had the opportunity to employ a variety of outreach techniques. Were there any techniques that were particularly effective for reaching the young adult generation?

We learned a lot over the last six months in terms of reaching this population. Some of the early research was focused on who were the best messengers for young people, and so we certainly utilized a lot of celebrities—particularly celebrities most likely to be popular among segments of the population that were more likely to be uninsured. Interestingly, even in your late twenties, moms and significant others are very important for getting young men to sign up for health care. When we partnered with organizations we got the message out that it’s still viable to have parents and families reaching out and reminding people of the importance of signing up for health care.

We do a lot of trainings with organizations to teach them about the health care law and how it affects young people in their network. Another effective strategy we found for signing young people up individually was having fun activities around enrollment. For example we would have a local DJ throw a party for 400 to 500 people and we would talk to individuals about health insurance and enroll them on site.

How has Young Invincibles used technology, and the major role it plays in young adult’s daily lives, in outreach?

We had a number of digital strategies. Much of our strategy involved placing ads with populations that are most likely to need health care coverage, but we also connect with a lot of our network through Facebook and Twitter. On that note, it is important to be aware that people don’t always want to communicate certain things on social media. We found that people weren’t necessarily going to share their health details such as “I just signed up for coverage” or something that they felt was private, but you can still use social media to get the word out that options are out there.

We also built a mobile application that provides information about how to get covered as well as ratings of doctors pulled through other applications in your local area. So let’s say you live in Washington State: You can download our app and get basic information about how to use the exchange. Then you can also search doctors in the area or see who has the highest consumer ratings and make your decision about who to see. We found that a lot of young people haven’t had experience with buying coverage or seeing doctors, so we found this to be very helpful.

A recent report states that over 8 million people enrolled in Qualified Health Plans (QHPs) through the new health insurance marketplaces during its first Open Enrollment period. How much room is there for continued enrollment growth over the next year for this group? Will tactics change to target the remaining uninsured?

We came out with a report showing that young people are more likely to qualify for nearly all categories of special enrollment— where you can sign up outside of the normal open enrollment periods. These categories include things like getting pregnant because most mothers are between the ages of 18 and 34. Additionally, young people are much more likely to move, and if you move to a new state or even a new county, you may qualify for a new insurance plan. Many of these categories are going to include a lot of young people who will be able to qualify. Much of our outreach over the next few months will be targeted at making sure people know that they’re not necessarily cut off from buying insurance coverage outside of open enrollment.

Also, we will use new data to identify where people have signed up and then make decisions about where more effort will pay off in targeting uninsured populations. For example, when we identify exchanges that were really successful in signing up young people, and those that still need some help, we might consider targeting the latter exchanges a little bit more.

In a past Chicago Policy Review interview, Jennifer Koehler, the Executive Director of Illinois’ health insurance marketplace GetCoveredIllinois, said that the next step after enrolling everyone in the marketplace would be to make sure the individuals both remained insured and took advantage of this new insurance. Is Young Invincibles planning to take part in these types of efforts?

We will certainly get the word out about benefits on the plans. It’s good to see that there is some early evidence that people who joined their parents’ plan are using things like mental health services more than they were previously. This is also where our mobile app helps by making sure that once young people have information on how to buy coverage, we also tell them where to find doctors and make it easy to meet their medical health needs.

Given that young adults are more likely to be changing insurance plans moving from job to job and other qualifying life events, what is the best way to evaluate available options and verify that their needs are met?

When we were signing people up for coverage a lot of people were concerned about the networks available. It is important to make sure that your plan covers enough doctors in your network that you can actually visit a doctor that is covered. This might be something we work on going forward given that some of the initial plans offered had limited coverage networks.

Feature Photo: cc/(iwishiwashannah)