The ObamaCare Propaganda Campaign

The ObamaCare Propaganda Campaign by  by Arnold Ahlert In an effort that exemplifies both desperation and contempt for the public, the Obama administration, in coordination with its media cheerleading squad, is determined to rebrand ObamaCare. Toward that end, Families USA (FUSA) a self-described “national nonprofit, non-partisan organization dedicated to the achievement of high-quality, affordable health care for all Americans” was given a $1.1 million grant by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. Their mission is to gather ObamaCare success stories and feed them to the media. Thus the American left embarks on yet another mission to “change the narrative” of a disaster entirely of their own making.
And make no mistake: despite the non-partisan claims, FUSA is an organization with roots firmly planted on the left side of the ideological ledger. As far back as 2008, when the leftist Palm Beach Post featured two articles promoting universal, government-run healthcare–because Floridians were dying daily due to a lack of insurance–they were citing research compiled by FUSA.
The present is no different. FUSA president Philippe Villers currently serves as the “Secretary and Treasurer of Board” for the Herndon Alliance, which also touts itself as a “non-partisan” organization, but one that is “working and speaking out for the provisions of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010.” In 2009, Politico described the group as ”the messaging arm of a vast center-left infrastructure pushing health care reform,” further noting that “nearly every major health care player, from the Service Employees International Union to Families USA and the American Cancer Society, calls itself a Herndon partner.” Yet the key takeaway from the article is this: “When President Barack Obama says Americans can maintain their ‘choice’ of doctors and insurance plans, he is using a Herndon strategy for wringing fear out of a system overhaul.” Thus, this “non-partisan” organization wrung fear out of the system by helping the president perpetrate one of the more egregious lies ever told by a Chief Executive. And they did so with funding provided by left-wing organizations such as the Tides Foundation and George Soros’s Open Society Institute.
In an interview with Time magazine, FUSA Executive Director Ron Pollack reveals that his organization, which already has a “story bank” containing 950 stories available for media consumption, will use the grant to conduct a spin campaign on behalf of ObamaCare. This is consistent with Pollack’s efforts in 2010, when he told Washington Post columnist and Obama toady Ezra Klein that he was helping to found Enroll America to “raise tens of millions of dollars for state groups to work with the state to try to create the most effective systems to apply and enroll (in ObamaCare).”
Enroll America is the group who recently saw Christopher Tarango, one of their communication directors, caught on videotape making a complete mockery of the notion that they are non-partisan organization. ”There’s a lot of talent that got sucked into Organizing for Action. I mean, there’s a lot of talent that got sucked into Enroll America, but we are all Obama people,” he told an undercover reporter from Project Veritas.
That was only the organization’s latest black eye. In testimony before a House ethics panel last June, HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius admitted that she asked the aforementioned Robert Wood Johnson Foundation to contribute to Enroll America. Furthermore this “non-partisan” organization’s president is Ann Filipic, who was deputy director for the White House Office of Public Engagement, and its managing director is Chris Wyant, a former White House economics official.
The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, the largest ”non-partisan” philanthropy focused exclusively on health care, is also deeply rooted in leftist ideology. They too have long championed universal healthcare, spending millions of dollars in the 1990s in an effort to get state legislatures to write laws to that effect. The Foundation also promoted HillaryCare by sponsoring forums during which the former First Lady touted her proposals.
The first step in re-marketing ObamaCare has been fairly straight-forward: eliminate the term completely. Thus, the same president who as recently as Nov. 8 told a group of supporters that his opponents would stop using the term ObamaCare once his “signature achievement” gained popularity, beat them to the punch. Despite his former embrace of the term, it was never used during a Nov. 14 news conference. Instead the president referred to the “Affordable Care Act” a dozen times.
Politico further revealed that this was no accident, noting that House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi corrected David Gregory on “Meet the Press” the following Sunday, and that they had obtained White House talking points distributed to Democrats that “repeatedly refer to the Affordable Care Act in suggested sound bites, not Obamacare.”
This change typifies progressive contempt for the public. The Obama administration and it supporters have undoubtedly seen a poll taken in September that shows Americans respond more favorably to the term Affordable Care Act than ObamaCare. Thus, rather than clear up the confusion in the minds of the public, they prefer to exploit it.
As so it begins. The Christian Science Monitor insists that after “weeks of stories about website crashes and canceled health plans–and an extraordinary mea culpa from President Obama–a competing story line is starting to emerge.” They further note that both the left-leaning New York Times and the Los Angeles Times have touted a “surge” in enrollment figures. Laughably, they attribute this change in coverage to a “media effect,” one in which reporters and the public “get tired of all the wall-to-wall negativity, and to keep interest up, seek out happy stories for a change of pace.”
Yet even the Monitor is forced to admit that Democratic senators have been sent off for Thanksgiving with “marching orders” to find and publicize positive stories about the healthcare bill.
Furthermore, the day before Thanksgiving, reality intruded once again: the Obama administration unilaterally postponed the signup portal for small businesses until after the 2014 mid-term election. This followed a decision earlier the same week to postpone the 2014 open enrollment period for ObamaCare past the election as well.
The reason is painfully transparent. As bad as the insurance policy cancellations on the individual market that have afflicted 5 million Americans — and counting — have been for Democrats, they are nothing compared to the political Armageddon that awaits. Anywhere from 80-100 million Americans could also see their employer-based policies cancelled because they don’t comply with ObamaCare. Cancellations that were projected by the Obama administration itself back in 2010.
That’s the reality that FUSA, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, Democrats, the Obama administration and countless media organizations will be attempting to diminish with a series of “feel good” stories. One seriously doubts they can come up with 80-100 million of them.