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Team Trump Used Obamacare Money to Run Ads Against It

  

Category:  News & Politics

Via:  hal-a-freeganlujah  •  7 years ago  •  10 comments

Team Trump Used Obamacare Money to Run Ads Against It

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The Trump administration has spent taxpayer money meant to encourage enrollment in the Affordable Care Act on a public relations campaign aimed at methodically strangling it.

 The effort, which involves a multi-pronged social media push as well as video testimonials designed at damaging public opinion of President Obama ’s health care law, is far more robust and sustained than has been publicly revealed or realized.

The strategy has caught the eye of legal experts and Democrats in Congress, who have asked government agencies to investigate whether the administration has misused funds and engaged in covert propaganda in its efforts to damage and overturn the seven-year-old health care law. It’s also roiled Obama administration veterans, who argue that the current White House is not only abdicating its responsibilities to administer the law but sabotaging it in an effort to facilitate its undoing by Congress.

“I’m on a daily basis horrified by leaders at the Department of Health and Human Services who seem intent on taking healthcare away from the constituents they are supposed to serve,” former HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius said in an interview with The Daily Beast. “We always believed that delivering health and human services was the mission of the department. That seems to not be the mission of the current leadership.”

The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) declined repeated attempts to discuss its PR efforts. But more than half-a-dozen sources at various agencies and on the Hill outlined the scope of the anti-Obamacare push in conversations with The Daily Beast.

Under Secretary Tom Price’s stewardship, HHS has filmed and produced a series of testimonial videos featuring individuals claiming to have been harmed by Obamacare. Those “viral” videos have had decidedly limited reach, often gathering somewhere between 100 and 200 views each. But the Department has made a heavy investment in them nonetheless. To date, it has released 23 videos. A source familiar with the video production says that there have been nearly 30 interviews conducted in total, from which more than 130 videos have been produced.

Each testimonial has the same look, feel, and setting, with the subjects sitting before a gray backdrop and speaking directly to camera about how Obamacare has harmed their lives. They were all shot at the Department’s internal studio, according to numerous sources who worked for or continue to work at HHS. Under the Obama administration, it was customary that such videos were recorded and edited by an outside contractor who then billed the department for its work. One former official said that the contractor would charge roughly $550 an hour.

Funding for those videos would come from the Department’s “ consumer information and outreach ” budget, which was previously used for the purposes of advertising the ACA and encouraging enrollment. The Trump administration has requested $574 million for this specific budget item, though HHS declined to detail how much it has devoted to specific line items. Two sources familiar with the videos say that HHS continues to draw money from the outreach fund, even though its objective has switched from promoting the ACA to highlighting the law’s critics and its shortcomings.

Getting the subjects to HHS’ studio also cost taxpayer money. In this case, the White House itself found individuals, often through local news stories and Republican Party connections, and flew them to Washington, D.C., to participate in roundtables to discuss Obamacare. From there, they were whisked across town to HHS headquarters.

“We had no clue [this was happening],” Tracie Sanchez of Lima, Ohio, told The Daily Beast. “That just popped up when we got there.”

A small business owner who kept her company at 49 employees for many years to avoid Obamacare’s mandate that larger employers cover workers’ health care, Sanchez said it was an “honor” to have been invited to the White House and to have appeared in an HHS video. But others who were filmed felt more ambivalent about their experience.

Dr. Ryan Stanton of Kentucky is critical of Obamacare but also acknowledges that the legislation has been beneficial in certain respects. He’s also uncertain about Republican-authored replacements. When he sat down for a recording at the HHS studio he said it “felt like they were pushing for a harder line against Obamacare” than he was delivering.

“I don’t think mine was the exact message they were looking for of, ‘Oh, let’s march against Obamacare,’” he recalled. “It was clearly an effort to push the repeal and replace.”

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Hal A. Lujah
Professor Guide
link   seeder  Hal A. Lujah    7 years ago

“I’m on a daily basis horrified by leaders at the Department of Health and Human Services who seem intent on taking healthcare away from the constituents they are supposed to serve,” former HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius said in an interview with The Daily Beast. “We always believed that delivering health and human services was the mission of the department. That seems to not be the mission of the current leadership.”

 
 
 
Randy
Sophomore Participates
link   Randy    7 years ago

Funding for those videos would come from the Department’s “ consumer information and outreach ” budget, which was previously used for the purposes of advertising the ACA and encouraging enrollment.

Disgusting, but not surprising. There must be some way to punish them for this and other things they are doing to sabotage the ACA, just so they can claim it's failing, while it's them themselves who are forcing it to fail. They have have no consideration for the number of people who are being harmed by their actions. It's they who are causing the instability in the insurance marketplace by actions like this and threats not to pay subsidies that is causing insurance companies to pull out of different areas of the country that they then get to point to as a failure of the system. It's like they are strangling someone and then blaming that person for having trouble breathing, so they'll just kill him instead, while promising to find a new person to help...someday...maybe.

 
 
 
XXJefferson51
Senior Guide
link   XXJefferson51    7 years ago

Hey hey ho ho Obamacare has got to go! 

 
 
 
1ofmany
Sophomore Silent
link   1ofmany    7 years ago

According to the article, Obama used the consumer and outreach budget to promote Obamacare and Trump is using it to highlight problems with the program. I'm not aware of anything that requires Trump to promote a program that he opposes any more than Obama was required to undermine a program he supports. What is really really really stupid is democrats passing Obamacare without a single republican vote and then being shocked when an incoming republican administration tears the program apart. Unlike some other things, national health care must be done by consensus and cannot be left to partisan squabbling where one side builds a house and the other side knocks it down as soon as they're in the position to do so. 

 
 
 
Hal A. Lujah
Professor Guide
link   seeder  Hal A. Lujah  replied to  1ofmany   7 years ago

I personally can't wait to see the reaction from the rural Republican morons who put Trump in office, when their healthcare problems mushroom and they get what they deserve.  It's unfortunate that the rest of us will have to share in the victimization though.

 
 
 
96WS6
Junior Quiet
link   96WS6  replied to  1ofmany   7 years ago

This is the kind of crap that happens when you have poorly written laws that you "have to pass in order to find out what's in it."    What a surprise!

 
 
 
pat wilson
Professor Participates
link   pat wilson    7 years ago

During his campaign Trump effectively gas-lighted his base, now as "president" he's attempting to gas-light the entire country. Problem for him is he has neither the skills nor the finesse to do this. Humpty Trumpty will have a great fall.

 
 

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