According to a Politico report, the Community Health Alliance, an insurance co-op in Tennessee, is running a promotional program in order to boost enrollment on the Obamacare insurance exchanges: buy health insurance, get a smartphone.
According to the Nashville Business Journal, “CHA is offering qualified individuals (we know how that works with Obamaphones) an LG Lucid 2 4G smart phone (or equivalent model), a phone plan and tech support, included as a cost of their health plan benefits. The phone plan includes unlimited talk, unlimited texting and 1.2GB of data.”
The goal of the program is to allow patients and their health-care providers to stay connected, and to allow CHA to keep track of its members, most of whom they expect to be new to the health-insurance market. “Members will have the phone number for their CHA representative pre-loaded in their phones and can quickly get answers to questions about their policies,” said CHA Chief Operating Officer Judy Slagle in a news release. “At the same time, we will be able to connect with our members by phone, by email or by text almost instantly with health tips and reminders.”
The co-op received a federal loan of more than $73 million.