Minnesota recently announced the rates for health plans that will be offered through the MNsure marketplace and they are the lowest of any state operating its own exchange. This is good news for families and small businesses who are considering purchasing coverage through MNsure and it may encourage more people to do the same. The participating plans deserve some credit for keeping their plans affordable (but let’s be clear—lower premiums should result in more customers for these plans). Whether these rates will remain affordable after three or five years is an open question, but this is a promising start.

But the data I’m really interested in are enrollment numbers, which should begin arriving in another month or so.

Minnesota has recruited legendary lumberjack Paul Bunyan and his blue ox Babe to be the official representatives of MNsure, the state’s insurance exchange. They’ll be featured in a multimedia campaign that depicts Bunyan suffering various accidents that would require an expensive trip to the ER. The slogan “Land of 10,000 Reasons to Get Health Insurance” seems a little clunky, but it gets the point across. The campaign has a folksy Minnesota appeal that should play well around the state. I noticed a couple MNsure billboards during my drive home today, so it looks like the messaging has already begun.

Over at the Amazon Daily Washington Post, Sarah Kliff has a great piece about the young people who are trying to persuade their peers to not sign up for Obamacare. Funded by conservative groups like FreedomWorks, these college kids are doing their best to keep young people out of the insurance marketplaces, which will drive up insurance premiums for everyone else. They are even co-opting a bit of Sixties counterculture symbolism in an effort to drive their message home. They invite people to burn their “Obamacare cards” as a gesture of civil disobedience. But like a lot of conservative attempts to borrow from youth culture, this effort has all the forced awkwardness of Mitt Romney showing up at the Pitchfork Music Festival in a faded Replacements T-shirt.

Let’s set aside the fact that Obamacare cards don’t exist, which requires activists to mock up and print out their own cards for burning. They are trying to draw parallels between refusing to participate in an unpopular war and screwing yourself over by not obtaining health insurance because freedom and stuff. Maybe I’m underestimating the potency of their message and in the fall we’ll see wall-to-wall coverage of people taking a lighter to their fake Obamacare cards. But I’m guessing that most Millennials are smart enough to figure out what’s in their best interest.

The Strib reports on the initial outreach efforts to spread the word about MNsure, Minnesota’s insurance exchange. The big push will begin closer to the State Fair, which is how we Northlanders mark the end of the summer. This might be a good time to mention that I’ll be happy to help people navigate the MNsure website once open enrollment begins on October 1st. The site should be straightforward to use, but a little guidance never hurts. I’ll repeat this offer as October draws near.