OBAMACARE NAVIGATORS HELPING PEOPLE ENROLL AT MEXICAN CONSULATES

The Obama administration has been helping to facilitate a series of events nationwide at Mexican Consulate offices to enroll people in Obamacare – and a key activist says the efforts are “our responsibility” regardless of citizenship.

 

“Whether they’re Mexican nationals or whether they’re United States citizens or whether they’re in transition-- and if they’re there it is our responsibility within all of America to educate on the Affordable Care Act,” Enroll America Field Organizer Jose Medrano told Breitbart News on Wednesday.

Health Care insurance navigator groups hosted an Obamacare enrollment fair on Tuesday in the Mexican Consulate’s Brownsville office, The Rio Grande Guardianreported last Friday, where Mexican nationals among others were counseled about enrolling in the ACA.

“The Mexican consulate is a very reliable source of information to the Latino community. And therefore when they host their events, yesterday being the health fair, there are several hundred people that show up,” Medrano said.

Under the Affordable Care Act (ACA), undocumented immigrants aren't supposed to be receiving government-run health benefits or subsidized coverage. However, President Barack Obama told Latinos in early March that the Healthcare.gov website would not be used to find out about an individual’s immigration status.

“None of the information that is provided in order for you to obtain health insurance is in any way transferred to immigration services,” he said.

According to Medrano, 101 families were represented at the ACA enrollment and education fair at the Brownsville Mexican Consulate on Tuesday and about 60 percent of them spoke to a health care counselor. Medrano says that the consulate’s office is helpful “as part of the transition” to “mainstream… America.”

This is not the first time the Mexican Consulate has been used to enroll individuals into Obamacare. Get Covered Illinois announced in late February that the Erie Family Health Center hoped to increase its enrollment numbers at the Mexican Consulate in Chicago,The Sun Times reported.

According to Vegas Seven, in Nevada, the Latino community is being targeted for ACA enrollment at the Mexican Consulate in downtown Las Vegas. Insurance News says Hispanic National Advocacy groups like National Alliance for Hispanic Health have helped lead the push to get more Latinos enrolled in Obamacare.

Via: Breitbart

Continue Reading....

O’Keefe video captures nonprofit Obamacare enrollment group conspiring to engage in political activity

Watch the video below!

An official with the nonprofit Obamacare enrollment group Enroll America conspired to give people’s personal information to what he thought was a political action committee, according to James O’Keefe’s latest video, provided to The Daily Caller.

Enroll America, which Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius admitted to fundraising for, is a “nonpartisan” 501(c)(3) nonprofit that critics accuse of working as an unofficial Obamacare navigator across the country.

Enroll America’s Texas state communications lead Christopher Tarango conspired to provide a list of potential Obamacare enrollees, obtained through the “commit cards” that the group hands out door to door to help them pick insurance plans, to an O’Keefe investigator posing as the representative of a political action committee.

Via Daily Caller

Continue Reading.....

Obamacare Ads Steer Clear From Discussing Penalties

The state and federal health insurance exchanges created under Obamacare are touting the benefits of coverage but largely steering clear of discussing the penalty for not signing up. 

The avoidance of penalty talk is by design rather than default, reports The New York Times, noting that operators say market research has showed that consumers are more likely to respond to positive messages than to the threat of punishment.

"We feel that the carrot is better than the stick," Larry Hicks, a spokesman for Covered California,  told the newspaper. "This is a new endeavor. We want people to come in and test our wares."

Officials at Enroll America, a nonprofit agency promoting the new exchanges, agreed. 

Sophie Stern, a senior policy analyst for the agency, told the Times, "That doesn't mean that the penalty or the mandate isn't an important piece of the law from a policy perspective. But from a messaging perspective, this is what we find resonates best."

But there is another side to downplaying the penalty: The so-called tax is difficult to enforce. As Forbes contributor Roberton Williams explained,  "If you owe a penalty, you're supposed to pay it with your income tax return. But there's not much the IRS can do if you don't pay. They can't put you in jail or garnish your wages. In fact, about the only way the IRS can collect is if you're due a refund. They can deduct the penalty from this year's and future refunds."

"It might be that they want to be positive," Michael Cannon, director of health policy studies at the Cato Institute, said to the Times, referring to exchange operators. "But it's also the case that an informed customer is not their best customer."

There is also the question of whether it would cost more to buy insurance than to pay the penalty, which in 2014 is $95 per adult, or 1 percent of their income, and half that for children under 18. 

Via: Newsmax
Continue Reading.....

Obamacare marketing push on hold

Team Obamacare is sitting on hundreds of millions of dollars of essentially frozen assets — yet another consequence of the failed launch of healthcare.gov. 

There’s no point in an ad blitz directing people to sign up on a website that doesn’t work. And while advocacy groups say they had always planned to spend more money on the back end to boost enrollment in lagging states at the end of this year and early next year, they didn’t count on the opening month fizzle.

The website bomb is more than just an inconvenience for the groups, stocked with people who have been working for years to ensure that insurance is available to all Americans. The ad effort is an integral part of the plan to sign up enough people — particularly the “young invincibles” so critical to making the law’s exchanges a success — to make the system both accessible and affordable.

“You can have the greatest PR program imaginable on all different platforms — social, media, advertising and earned media — but you have to have a product that is functioning,” said Peter Mirijanian, a Washington PR veteran.

The pro-Obamacare interest groups have been holding back, according to White House and insurance industry sources, in large part because they don’t want to direct people to a website that’s not working.

“There was definitely a pullback,” said one health insurance company executive, noting concern about “money wasted” on advertising. “Why would you spend $1 million sending people to a website that’s broken?” the executive asked.

Enroll America, which is closely tied to the administration, has always focused its effort on digital advertising and field organizing rather than broadcast television, according to Justin Nisly, a spokesman for the group. Officials there also looked at October as a month for educating consumers, so the main shift has not been in expenditures but in directing folks to get information from human beings rather than the troubled website.

Via: Politico

Continue Reading.....