The public relations firm Porter Novelli has inked a whopping $20 million contract with the Department of Health and Human Services to promote ObamaCare, according to PR Week. The law, which hardly anyone read before it was passed along partisan lines, mandates the PR campaign to promote health and wellness, but also to promote the alleged benefits of the law itself. While HHS says that the contract bid was competitive, the firm that won the contract is headed by a former on-air surrogate for Obama for America. This fact raises the question of whether this contract was yet another insider deal using taxpayer dollars, along the lines of Solyndra.
The contract comes as the US faces surging unsustainable debt. While $20 million is not much when weighed against the nearly $16 trillion in debt the nation is carrying, it is $20 million that we do not have, and that will be spent to promote one of the president’s unpopular policies. The contract also comes at the same time ObamaCare itself is under threat of being overturned by the US Supreme Court. ObamaCare is also being challenged in court on religious freedom grounds by dozens of Catholic organizations and agencies, and those challenges may succeed thanks to a 1993 law backed by Democrats. The timing of the contract, coming in the run-up to the fall presidential election, is also interesting. Essentially, the Porter Novelli contract can be seen as a $20 million taxpayer dollar infusion into President Obama’s re-election campaign.
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