World News Korner

With the Affordable Care website up and running the pro-Obamacare forces go on the offense.

Courtesy of Bloomberg:

Next week, a number of celebrities will join in an effort organized by an independent group to boost enrollment on the online exchanges, said a person familiar with the plan, who wasn’t authorized to speak publicly about it. An advertising blitz will begin in January after the holiday season has ended, said the person.

Scarlett Johansson, Aisha Tyler, and Gabrielle Union have recorded phone messages that Planned Parenthood is using to promote enrollment. Actresses Lena Dunham of “Girls” and Elizabeth Banks of “Hunger Games” posted Twitter messages to promote a Planned Parenthood Internet town hall this week on Obamacare.

In addition, Planned Parenthood, which provides health services to women, will “ramp up significantly” its efforts to promote enrollment in January, deploying hundreds of staff members with a goal of contacting a half-million people in Texas, Florida, Ohio and Pennsylvania, said Rachel Fleischer, spokesperson for Planned Parenthood Federation of America.

Enroll America, an advocacy group with close ties to the White House, plans more than a thousand events across the country to promote coverage during the first three weeks of December, a 40 percent increase from the same period in November, said Justin Nisly, a spokesman.

The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, the campaign arm of House Democrats, sent statements to the hometown news media of 60 Republican lawmakers who have previously voted to repeal Obamacare, criticizing them for benefits that would be eliminated.

The Republicans response to this, now that the website no longer affords offers them an example to use for their attack, is to cherry pick news of people having to pay higher premiums for coverage that is now more comprehensive than their old coverage, or which reflects the fact that the governors of their state did not work with the administration to expand Medicaid or put state sponsored health care exchanges in place.

That sort of makes the tactic of sending statements to the local press in those states reminding them that their conservative politicians may be responsible for why the program is not working in their community, and that they also voted to strip their constituents of the benefits that ARE working, kind of brilliant.

And let me just say, as a red blooded male, that NOTHING the Republicans can come up with is going to stand a chance against a message on my phone from Scarlett Johansson telling me that enrolling IS a good idea.

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