Spurned By NFL, Obama Enlists Hollywood To Market 'Obamacare'
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President Obama is enlisting Hollywood for help marketing enrollment in health insurance exchanges to be instituted as part of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, known as "Obamacare."
Earlier this summer, the National Football League (NFL) withdrew from previous discussions to promote enrollment in health exchanges following a warning from Sens. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky and John Cornyn of Texas to professional sports leagues in the United States.
"Given the divisiveness and persistent unpopularity of the health care law, it is difficult to understand why an organization like yours would risk damaging its inclusive and apolitical brand by lending its name to its promotion," the senators wrote in a letter to league executives.
Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius had approached various groups including the NFL to help promote efforts to attract a younger and healthier demographic to enroll in the insurance pools.
"We're having active discussions right now with a variety of sports affiliates" about both paid advertising and partnerships to encourage enrollment, Sebelius told reporters earlier in June. However, NFL spokesman Greg Aiello denied any "substantive contact with the administration" about the health insurance enrollment promotion.
On Monday, Obama met privately at the White House with Hollywood actors Jennifer Hudson, Amy Poehler, Michael Cera, and Kal Penn.
A spokesman for the administration says that the actors offered their assistance to the White House to help promote the opening of health insurance marketplaces on Oct. 1. Similar to the attempt with the NFL and possibly other professional sports leagues, the White House hopes to leverage free media power to reach younger uninsured Americans — who are generally healthier than older people, with or without health insurance — to enroll in the market-based plans.
In such an insurance pool, healthier rate payers would subsidize sicker beneficiaries, while paying lower rates in a tiered system.
Also present at the White House meeting were representatives for Oprah Winfrey, Alicia Keys, and Bon Jovi, as well as representatives from YouTube and "Funny or Die," a user-generated website offering comedic videos.
Conservatives and liberals challenge market-based compromise
As the administration prepares for the market-based health insurance exchange, Congressional opponents of the plan vowed this week to continue efforts to abolish the Affordable Care act. On CBS's Face the Nation on Sunday, Speaker of the House John Boehner told journalist Bob Schaeffer that "Obamacare is bad for America."
Boehner promised yet another House vote to strike the provision requiring Americans to purchase private health insurance, which takes effect next year and was upheld as constitutional by the U.S. Supreme Court. "We're going to do everything we can to make sure it never happens," he said.
Dr. Marcia Angell, the former editor-in-chief of The New England Journal of Medicine, agreed with republicans — at least on the premise of a market-based health care system. "Some dismiss a single-payer system as unrealistic, saying it would be politically impossible in the U.S. now, or in the foreseeable future," she wrote earlier this year. "What is truly unrealistic is imaging we can provide universal and affordable health care in a market-based system."