Obamacare girl ‘missing’ as search expands across Internet, death panel joke goes viral
Who is the woman who has become the face of Obamacare and where did she go?
When the glitch-plagued HealthCare.gov launched on Oct. 1, visitors were greeted by a smiling woman next to the tag line “The Health Insurance Marketplace is Open!”
For some users the site then crashed repeatedly, and navigation sometimes took hours. While people waited, the smiling visage of the same anonymous model became the face of frustration over the site’s issues, spawning an online meme.
Over the weekend, all pictures of the woman suddenly disappeared from the website, leaving a design with just text and graphics.
Media outlets have tried to track down her identity, but it remains a mystery. (con’t below screenshot)
From the NY Daily News:
“The unidentified model, whose image came from a stock image library, has been removed from healthcare.gov after media agencies tried to identify her — especially after the website experienced difficulty managing the number of people who tried to sign up through the Affordable Care Act.”
“The woman featured on the website signed a release for us to use the photo, but to protect her privacy, we will not share her personal or contact info with anyone,” Olague told BuzzFeed in an email.
The website’s source code indicates that the image file’s name is “Adriana.”