Obama uses Obamacare to build Latino support

06/07/2013

Neil Munro
White House Correspondent

Half of of the low-income customers for Obamacare’s California marketplaces are Hispanics, a White House official said June 6.

Six million people in California are eligible to enroll in the federally subsidized marketplaces, which will open in October, the official told reporters in a not-for-attribution phone briefing. Of those people, 2.6 million are eligible for subsidies, and “nearly half of those are Hispanic and Spanish speaking,” he said.

The briefing was intended to boost coverage of a Friday speech in California by President Barack Obama.

He’s expected use the speech to laud a far-reaching campaign by Spanish-language TV and newspaper companies to encourage Latino enrollment in the government-regulated and subsidized health-insurance marketplaces that were created by the 2010 Obamacare law.

The official also said that the administration is also using Obamacare funds to recruit new customers for the program in GOP-led states, such as Texas and Florida.

The outreach is aimed at “particularly the Latino and Hispanic communities,” said a second White House official. The outreach is being aided by mayors, advocacy groups and non-profits, she said.

Officials are also trying to recruit younger and healthier Americans, who use relatively few health-services and offset the cost of providing cheap health-care to older people. “That’s part of our goal… it is really important,” said one official.

Nationally, the expensive law remains deeply unpopular. This month, a poll by the Wall Street Journal and NBC reported that 49 percent of 1,000 respondents said it is a “bad idea.” However, polls show that Obamacare remains very popular among Hispanics.

After the 2012 election, Obama advisor David Plouffe said Latinos’ support for the program aided Obama in his race against Gov. Mitt Romney.

“The bigger problem [Republicans] have got with Latinos isn’t immigration,” Plouffe said told The New York Times in February. “It’s their economic policies and health care [and] the group that supported the president’s health care bill the most? Latinos.”
Aided by Obamacare, the Obama campaign even won a majority of GOP-leaning Cubans in Florida, the home state of Cuban-American Republican Sen. Marco Rubio. Obama’s majority support among Florida’s Cuban-Americans “is probably my favorite stat of the whole campaign,” Plouffe said.

The benefits will continue into the next election, Plouffe said. The “notion that Marco Rubio is going to heal their problems [in future elections]— it’s not even sophomoric; it’s juvenile!” Plouffe told the New York Times.

However, Romney won a landslide 56 percent of older Americans. Older Americans are worried that their retirement and health-care benefits are being cut to fund welfare programs, such as Obamacare.

Read more: http://dailycaller.com/2013/06/07/ob...#ixzz2VXvn9oZQ