One Year Later, White House Still Selling Obamacare

One year ago today, President Obama signed the Affordable Care Act into law. Despite the fact that Americans remain divided about the health care plan and most actually believe that it will make things worse rather than better, the Obama administration is seizing the anniversary as an opportunity for publicity.

Even, it seems, in college newspapers. Secretary of Labor Hilda Solis wrote a letter to the editor of the Notre Dame Observer, touting the law’s “Young Invincibles” provision:

It allows you to remain on your parents’ plan or rejoin it until age 26, even if you no longer live with your parents, are not a dependent on their tax return or are no longer a student. The new flexibility even applies if you are married. You are guaranteed the same benefits and at the same price that is available to other dependents.

If you’re a Daily Texan reader, it might look familiar. Or at Rutgers or Virginia Tech. The White House wrote, basically, a national letter to the editor. One year after the bill became law, the White House is still trying to sell college students on it.

And Solis isn’t the only one. A post on the White House blog yesterday featured an interview with a senior at Michigan State University, playing off of his goals of attending medical school by peripherally relating them to the very same “Young Invincibles” provision of the health care act. The post then features audio from President Obama calling the student.

The fact that both the editorial and the blog post zero in on the same, ultra-specific piece of the Affordable Care Act reveals a fairly unscrupulous attempt by the Obama administration to avert the public eye away from the plan’s existing and potential problems. With that in mind, it proves enlightening to look at a few of the grim realities of Obamacare, regardless of what details the White House can point to as a spurious microcosm of the plan as a whole.

—Adam Schwartzman