A new $20 million Obamacare public relations campaign to simply tell Americans to stay healthy is coming under heavy GOP fire as a propaganda effort to prop up the embattled health reform law and the president.
“I’m calling on the president to cancel this contract,” said Sen. John Barrasso, R-Wyo. “The American public want real solutions to problems of health care–not more press releases and propaganda paid for with their taxpayer dollars,” added the medical doctor who chairs the Senate Republican Policy Committee.
Ohio Sen. Rob Portman added, “There is no justification for wasting $20 million in taxpayer dollars on an advertising blitz for the president’s health care spending law.” The A-list GOP vice presidential possibility added, “With Washington nearly $16 trillion dollars in debt, the American taxpayers should not be asked to fund ad campaigns defending a law that only deepens the spending hole we’re in.”
The $20 million effort–more than 10 times previous efforts to promote Obama care–will publicize elements Obamacare that encourage Americans to stay healthy. Past efforts have included a $1 million program to send out 4 million postcards promoting a tax cut in the health plan and a $700,000 ad narrated by Andy Griffith.
PR Week revealed that the Health and Human Service Department’s Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services picked Porter Novelli to tell the public how to stay healthy, an education mandate in the Affordable Care Act.
Federal officials dismissed the calls to kill the contract, arguing that it is required under the law. They have also refused to stall implementation of Obamacare while the Supreme Court decides its future.
The Heritage Foundation also weighed in. “The PR push is part of a sustained effort to try to sell the unpopular Obamacare law to the American public,” said the group.
