Celebrities sell Obamacare using rap, social media

Since spring, the White House has worked with stars like Jennifer Hudson and Amy Poehler to engage 18- to 34-year-olds. Now states like California are also getting into the act, enlisting rap artists and others.

Los Angeles Times: Celebrities And Social Media Promote Healthcare Enrollment
It was just last week when officials at the state's health insurance exchange, Covered California, gave the green light to Obama impersonator Iman Crosson to come up with a rap song to sell young people on the virtues of Obamacare. The turnaround was going to be quick (Reston, 12/12). 

The Associated Press: Celebrities And Word-Of-Mouth Push Health Law
As enrollments lag around the U.S., Fran Drescher and Kal Penn are among the Hollywood faces being enlisted for the "Tell a Friend Get Covered" campaign, which will urge friends, family members and neighbors around the country to talk to each other about the health care law. The hope is that familiar faces can do something Obama, thus far, has not achieved -; getting millions of healthy, younger adults to enroll for coverage (12/13).

The administration also is reaching out to insurers -

The Wall Street Journal's Washington Wire: Health Insurers Feel Obama Administration's Love
The Obama administration has been known to bash health insurers from time to time, but now that it really needs their help, it wants them to feel the love. A top official behind the HealthCare.gov website offered his praise for insurers at a conference of industry executives in Washington Thursday. "Let me thank you again for all the work you are doing," said Gary Cohen, director of a unit at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services that is implementing the health-care overhaul. "This is an extraordinary model of a public-private partnership" (Radnofsky, 12/12). 

But there is bad news, too -

The Washington Post: Politifact Awards 'Lie Of The Year' To Obama
The fact-checking Web site Politifact has named President Obama's claim that people could keep their health insurance plans if they liked them its "Lie of the Year." Obama in recent years has repeated some variation of the following phrase: "If you like your health-care plan, you can keep it." The problem was, it wasn't true, as millions of Americans with health plans that didn't meet Obamacare's standards got cancellation notice (Blake, 12/12).