"The danger with scare tactics is that the individual pushes further away, uses even more denial," health psychologist Steven Tovian of Highland Park, Ill., told ABC News.
"We believe the contest's invincibility theme is fun and creative and may inspire numerous opportunities for informative videos to go viral and reach young people," he added.īut some of the videos might inadvertently reinforce the notion of invincibility, especially in young people who assume that such statistics don't apply to them. Young Invincibles Executive Director Aaron Smith said his Washington-based group partnered with the Department of Health & Human Services on the video contest "as a way to educate young adults, the country's most historically uninsured demographic, about their new affordable options under the Affordable Care Act." The contest calls for submissions that convince young, healthy Americans they're "not invincible." Department of Health and Human Services and Young Invincibles, a nonprofit that aims "to give young adults a voice in the health care debate."īoth hope to recruit healthy 18 to 35 year olds, who are likely to incur only negligible health care expenses, to offset the cost of caring for older, sicker registrants. 15, the Healthy Young America Video Contest is the product of a partnership between the U.S. While many videos use humor to make their point, others show young people lying in hospital beds or cite distressing statistics, often augmented by foreboding music, which ABC News described to the psychologists. Uploaded entries depict accidental amputations, lightning strikes, car crashes and flat-lined EKGs. In an attempt to attract the 2.7 million young people necessary to help make the Affordable Care Act a success, the beleaguered Obamacare team extended the voting deadline for a video contest designed to entice young Americans to enroll in health care coverage through the new exchanges. "What it tends to do is cause people to turn off the TV." I'm not sure that scaring the bejesus out of people can get them to change their behavior," clinical psychologist Rosalind Dorlen of the Overlook Medical Center in Summit, N.J., said after ABC News described the general tactics used in some of the videos. "For a lot of young people, illness is a rumor. The "not invincible" video contest promotion designed to hawk President Obama's health care law to young Americans may be arresting, even alarming, but most likely ineffective, two skeptical psychologists surmised.
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