One of the featured speakers on an Organizing for Action
(OFA) conference call Wednesday night designed to generate enthusiasm
for President Obama's signature health care legislation among community
organizers around the country, admitted on the call that Obamacare is
unpopular in polls. The speaker, identified as David Cutler, advised
those on the call to "help people" by banishing the term Obamacare and
using the program's formal title, the Affordable Care Act, when
encouraging friends and family to enroll. The Affordable Care Act, he
explained, polls much better than Obamacare.
Cutler, a Harvard professor and former health care advisor to President Obama's campaign, predicted
in 2010 that "Obamacare’s cost-control measures would create up to
400,000 jobs each year." So far that prediction has proven to be
entirely wrong, as health care costs since the enactment of Obamacare
have increased, while hospitals and health care companies around the
country have laid off thousands of employees.
Ignoring reports that less that one percent
of those who visited Obamacare sign up websites in some states on
Tuesday, the first day under the law individuals could sign up for the
new health care system, actually enrolled in the Obamacare exchanges,
Cutler tried to persuade the conference call audience that the massive
glitches on the websites indicated demand for Obamacare was
"overwhelming."
One problem with the "overwhelming demand" narrative, however, is
that according to revised updates about traffic, it simply isn't true.
The Los Angeles Times, for instance, reported
on Thursday that "California's health insurance exchange vastly
overstated the number of online hits it received Tuesday during the
rollout of Obamacare." According to spokespersons for the State of
California, "the Covered California
website got 645,000 hits during the first day of enrollment, far fewer
than the 5 million it reported Tuesday."
OFA call organizers, however, remained undaunted by the nationwide
debacle of Obamacare sign up glitches. The next six months, they said,
will be critical to the success of Obamacare, because individuals have
until March 1, 2014 to enroll in order to avoid penalties for failure to
have health insurance. Community organizers around the country, they
said, should encourage family and friends to enroll before that
deadline.
Organizing for Action
is the successor to President Obama's political campaign committee,
Obama for America. After President Obama's re-election in November 2012,
all the assets of his political campaign, including millions of emails
and the technology communication infrastructure, were converted to the
Organizing for Action "non-profit organization."
Unlike dozens of local Tea Party groups around the country, many of
which have been waiting for more than three years to secure tax-exempt
status from the IRS, OFA obtained that status from the IRS within days
of its application in January 2013.
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