Tactics to sell the health law: Moms and local news

The administration, as well as insurers and advocacy groups, will rely on several tactics to sell the public on the health law, appealing to mothers to recruit their adult children and seeking positive news coverage from local, rather than national, media. Community groups, meanwhile, are encountering challenges in enrolling Latinos, reports The Chicago Tribune.

The New York Times: New Pitch For Health Initiative: Mind Your Mom. Get Insured.
As the Obama administration's health overhaul sputters in its opening weeks, insurers and advocacy groups are pursuing a new strategy in the quest to get millions of young people to sign up for health insurance: They're appealing to their mothers. ... Recruiting enough young people is a major goal of the Obama administration because insurers need healthy customers to offset the cost of caring for those with expensive medical needs (Thomas, 11/25).

Politico: All (Good) Obamacare News Is Local
President Barack Obama has bungled HealthCare.gov so badly that he's told senior aides to not even try to win positive coverage from the national press. Instead, they're going local. In the past month, Obama and his Cabinet have hit nine of the top 10 cities with the highest concentration of the uninsured, while senior administration officials have held almost daily reporter conference calls in nearly a dozen states to challenge Republican governors who refuse to expand Medicaid. Obama's political arm, Organizing for Action, is taking a similar approach (Budoff Brown and Epstein, 11/26).

Politico: It's Not Obamacare, It's Business
Insurance companies are ready to unleash an expensive PR blitz to get 7 million new customers once HealthCare.gov is fixed. ... Big insurers and the stock analysts that track them say that once the White House is sure its enrollment website is working, the companies will barrage the airwaves with messages encouraging people to join new health insurance exchanges, either by signing up directly with insurers or by giving the website another shot (Cheney and Winfield Cunningham, 11/25).

Chicago Tribune: Outreach To Latinos On Health Coverage Faces Obstacles
Though more than 300,000 Illinois Latinos are estimated to be newly eligible for insurance coverage under President Barack Obama's signature legislation, there are many challenges in reaching them, including language barriers, lower rates of Internet access and lingering confusion about the health care law's impact on those living in the country illegally (O'Reilly, 11/25).

Obama is also turning to donors and doctors for support for the law --

Los Angeles Times: President Obama Hits Beverly Hills For Twin Democratic Fundraisers 
In the embrace of loyal supporters at twin Beverly Hills fundraisers, President Obama on Monday night defended his troubled healthcare plan and cast his administration as one that has defended "those ideas that built this country." "When I talk about the Affordable Care Act, all the fighting that we've been having to do, it's not just a matter of dollars and cents and why it's good for the economy to make sure that people aren't going to the emergency rooms because that's the most expensive care, and why the only way we're going to lower health care costs over the long term is if we start delivering health care smarter," Obama said at a reception at the home of former Lakers star and entrepreneur Magic Johnson and his wife, Cookie. "It's also a values question" (Linthicum and Decker, 11/25).

Politico: Doctors Invited To White House Tuesday 
The White House has invited physicians to discuss insurance exchange plans that kick in next year at a meeting on Tuesday, the American Medical Association confirmed today. In an invitation emailed Friday afternoon, physician groups were asked to meet from noon to 1 p.m. with Chris Jennings and Jeanne Lambrew, deputy health policy assistants to President Barack Obama (Winfield Cunningham, 11/25).