Democrats eagerly seeking signs of success with health-care law - Washington Post

The political battle over the future of the national health-care law is about to become a media faceoff between Republican accounts of mishap and failure vs. Democratic stories that hint at eventual success.

In a pre-Thanksgiving messaging memo, Democratic senators are being urged to use the holiday break to find success stories and “aggressively publicize them so that people can see the law is delivering on its promise.” The memo was prepared and distributed by the Senate Democratic Policy and Communications Committee, the Senate Democrats’ political messaging operation.

Also in recent days, Senate Republicans have been urging their members to tout new “Your Story” Web pages in English and Spanish that invite people to vent about the shortcomings of the health-insurance initiative.

Republicans have been capi­tal­izing on the disastrous launch of the federal Web site that is the centerpiece of the law’s implementation, using its setbacks as a weapon against President Obama and Democrats.

Acknowledging the pressure from that political fallout, Democrats are making a concerted effort to find people and places the law is working for in an effort to counter GOP attacks. Top Senate Democrats began asking rank-and-file senators this week to use the Thanksgiving recess to identify constituents benefiting from the law, in hopes of exploiting those examples when the Senate reconvenes in two weeks.

The political blowback from the troubled launch of the federal Web site has been especially concerning to Senate Democrats, who have been divided on how to deal with the implementation missteps. In addition to the functionality troubles of HealthCare.gov, millions of Americans have been getting cancellation notices about current health plans that fail to meet new standards set by the law. Those notices are a direct contradiction of the promise Obama made as the law was being debated in Congress and the country; he repeatedly said that people who liked the health insurance they had could keep it. The cancellations have been a political boon to Republicans.

As a counter, Democratic senators are being asked to use social media — especially the Twitter call-out #GotCovered — new “Got Covered Today” sections of their Web sites and specialized e-mail addresses to highlight people who “had a positive experience” enrolling for new health plans.

Any new success stories “will provide us with the ammunition we need to rebut Republican claims that the law isn’t working,” the memo said.

The effectiveness of this approach is an open proposition and in some ways exposes the divisions among Democrats about how to deal with the problem.

One senior Democratic aide familiar with the plan said that new push was needed because the White House was failing to tout the law’s early successes. “Democrats expected the White House to be more aggressive in promoting positive stories surrounding the Affordable Care Act, but that effort hasn’t gotten off the ground,” said the aide, who was not authorized to speak publicly about the plan and requested anonymity. “Congressional Democrats are recognizing they need to fill that gap.”