Feb 24 2014
The Washington Post profiles a White House staffer who went from being a field lieutenant in President Barack Obama's re-election campaign to helping oversee the effort to persuade people to sign up for insurance under the health law.
The Washington Post: For White House Staffer, The Health-Care Law May Be Harder Sell Than Obama Was
Two years ago, Marlon Marshall was deputy national field director for President Obama's disciplined, centralized reelection campaign. His job was to mobilize enthusiastic supporters to do something that cost them nothing: cast a vote. Now he is at the White House working on a very different, and arguably more difficult, effort: helping persuade Americans to get - and in many cases pay for - health insurance (Eilperin, 2/20).
Also, the president is expected to resubmit a proposal to require wealthy seniors to pay more for Medicare benefits as part of his proposed 2015 budget -
The Washington Post: With 2015 Budget Request, Obama Will Call For End To Era Of Austerity
The latest estimates from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office show the deficit falling to $514 billion this year and to $478 billion in fiscal 2015 - well below the trillion-dollar deficits the nation racked up during the recession and immediately afterward. But the CBO warned that deficits would start to grow again in a few years. In recognition of that fact, Obama would retain some parts of his grand-bargain framework, including a proposal to require wealthy seniors to pay more for Medicare benefits than they do now. White House officials said the president continues to believe that entitlement programs such as Medicare and Social Security must be reformed to be sustainable (Goldfarb, 2/20).
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 This article was reprinted from kaiserhealthnews.org with permission from the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation. Kaiser Health News, an editorially independent news service, is a program of the Kaiser Family Foundation, a nonpartisan health care policy research organization unaffiliated with Kaiser Permanente.
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