To reiterate: The Patient “Protection” and “Affordable” Care Act’s success relies extensively on the widespread and willing participation of young people in their twenties and thirties in order the balance out and pay for the inherently riskier and pricier insurance pools that the program creates. This is not and never has been a secret — it’s just how the arithmetic will work (or so the law’s supporters hope, anyway). The largely unnecessary costs young people are going to be expected to bear will likely be so disproportionally expensive that a fair few are going to be rethinking their financial priorities — especially in this time of ongoing economic stagnation — and unfortunately for the administration, too many young people for comfort still don’t think health insurance will be a worthwhile investment.

Hence, the aggressively creative marketing campaigns coming in from all sides specifically targeted to young people; and really, what do Obamabotic youths enjoy more than a good ol’ fashioned government-sponsored social media contest? HuffPo summarizes the newly-unveiled campaign:

With precious time remaining before the health care exchanges established by the president’s health care law are up and running, the Obama administration is rolling out new initiatives to encourage enrollment.

The latest of these is set to be unveiled on Monday, when the Department of Health and Human Services will debut a video contest — complete with cash prizes — designed to persuade younger consumers to get insurance.

The administration will partner with Young Invincibles, a non-profit youth issues organization, to run the contest, with the goal of reaching those younger Americans who are skeptical of the need for health coverage.

Participants will be encouraged to submit three different types of videos advertising the benefits of the exchanges: a song, an animated short, or a video designed to convince viewers that they aren’t invincible. Using funds from the Affordable Care Act’s education and outreach budget, HHS will award $3,000 each to the creators of the three most popular and persuasive videos, while second and third place winners will get $2,500 each.

Yes, by all means: I’m sadly all too certain that there are plenty of young people out there who sincerely cannot wait to put together a song-and-dance video short celebrating the hundreds of dollars more they could soon paying a year for needlessly expensive insurance coverage — whether they realize explicitly that that’s the cause célèbre here or not.