Insurance companies plan to spend a combined $500 million in local television advertising in 2014, according to the Washington Post — more than double what they spent in 2012.
There is one obvious culprit: Obamacare.
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.
The Wall Street reported Monday that WellPoint will spend $100 million by the end of the year after having held off because of problems with HealthCare.gov.
The ad blitz from insurers comes at the same time that the Obama administration and outside advocates are upping their outreach efforts ahead of the Dec. 23 deadline to sign up for coverage that starts in January.
