Three years after signing Obamacare into law, President Barack Obama finally looks eager to talk about it.
The White House is mapping out a strategy to deploy the president, First Lady Michelle Obama, Vice President Joe Biden and Jill Biden in what will be their most coordinated effort yet to sell Obamacare, senior administration officials said.
A burst of activity will coincide with the October opening of the insurance marketplaces, but the West Wing views this next phase as something more akin to a political campaign’s push for early votes. Over the six-month enrollment period, the White House will use the Obamas and Bidens strategically, tracking the turnout for the exchanges in key states and sending them into weak markets to boost numbers.
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Obama’s deepening engagement stands in contrast to his arms-length treatment of the law since the legislative fight, bruising and endless, drew to a close in 2010. He moved onto other priorities — and only rarely, if not reluctantly, looked back.
But in the last month alone, Obama has plugged the new health benefits on “The Tonight Show with Jay Leno,” convened a videoconference with state health officials from the Situation Room, devoted a weekly address to the law and tweeted about it with Katy Perry, who boasts 41 million followers.
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Capitalizing on the March on Washington this week, Obama and top administration officials courted leaders of the African-American community, which has the highest uninsured rate of any demographic. And on Thursday night, he touted Obamacare in a recorded video message at MegaFest, a faith-based conference in Dallas organized by megachurch pastor T.D. Jakes.
The increased involvement comes at an obvious juncture, as the unpopular law enters prime time. But it also signals the stakes for Obama: It’s his best opportunity to prove critics wrong and begin turning around public opinion if the rollout can beat expectations, which the president is already trying to downplay with his refrain that Obamacare won’t be the first flawless enterprise in human history.
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“Check it out, find out what’s right, sign up preliminarily and then actually go ahead and get that insurance starting on October 1st,” Obama said in an interview aired Thursday on the Yolanda Adams Morning Show. “And so we’re just going to keep on providing people with information, pumping this up.”
Just don’t look for the president on Oct. 1.
It’s the first day to sign up for health care — and a major milestone for Obama’s signature domestic achievement — but he isn’t likely to mark what aides describe as an arbitrary benchmark, even though he’s emphasized the date in his recent interviews.
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Government funding runs dry that day, raising the possibility that congressional gridlock could force in a shutdown, so the White House wants to keep his schedule open.
There will be an coordinated push, with events by advocacy groups and tweets from celebrities, but aides said they’re reluctant to over-hype the first day. Glitches and problems are likely. At least one state, Oregon, has delayed opening its exchanges until mid-October. And the actual coverage doesn’t begin until Jan. 1.
In recent months, Obama has not only focused on the law more often in public. The implementation has consumed an increasing share of his attention behind closed doors.
Obama packs health policy aides into the Roosevelt Room at the White House every month, pressing them for more than an hour at a time on latest on Obamacare implementation.
W.H. prepares for major Obamacare push
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