© Occupy Corporatism
The California Endowment is providing $500k in grant monies to the Hollywood, Health and Society (HHS) program at the University of Southern California (USC) Norman Lear Center (NLC) to teach "TV writing staffs on the politically contentious law and to track health care plot-lines in existing shows."
Indeed, the "18-month grant will be used to inform television writers, producers, and others involved in television programming on Obamacare facts and implementation information in California and nationwide."
On prime-time television, plot lines will be written to encourage young Americans to enroll in the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare).
The HHS has been effective in the past of coercing Americans with directed plot lines in specific television shows to guide the audience into supporting a predisposed goal or belief system about a particular agenda.
Martin Kaplan, principal investigator for the HHS and director of the NLC said: "Our experience has shown that the public gets just as much, if not more, information about current events and important issues from their favorite television shows and characters as they do from the news media and online resources. This grant will allow us to ensure that industry practitioners have up-to-date, relevant facts on health care reform to integrate into their storylines and projects."
Phone interviews and "in-person briefings" with staff "from various television shows, produce online resources, organize subject-matter expert panels, air public service announcements, and track Obamacare-related depictions on primetime and Spanish-language television."
Promotion of Get Covered America (GCA) is central because this program "is a multi-year bilingual outreach and enrollment campaign designed to educate Latino and lower-income Californians about Obamacare and to drive them to enroll in Medi-Cal or private insurance through Covered California, the state's health benefits marketplace."
Daniel Zingale, senior vice president of the CE explained: "People take action when they see the same information from multiple streams. Our partnership with Hollywood Health & Society will help to ensure that we reach people where they are - in their homes and living rooms - and complement our efforts and efforts by Covered California to reach Californians through the news, online and print media."
Vice President Joe Biden attributes the new social demeanor on homosexuals to the show Will & Grace for displaying a prominent gay character that contributed "more to educate the public than almost anything anybody's done so far."
Kaplan said: "Public health is a common good. Public health is not a partisan issue. America needs to be healthy. People need to have access to health care. That's not a controversial statement."
Jonathan Wilcox, Republican strategist, stated that Hollywood influence on views is a powerful medium, if utilized that can make "the healthcare law successful."
Wilcox said: "The Bush White House wouldn't have asked Law and Order to do a show defending the Patriot Act, because it wouldn't work. In my business, there is way too much reliance and investment in the power of creative communication. Because there is something more powerful than that, and that's people's personal experiences."
One agenda of Obamacare is to push for pushing screening and counseling for insurance recipients through coverage plans offered by corporations.
Insurance corporations currently offer weight-loss and wellness programs for businesses, public schools, and communities through city contracts; as well as coverage on obesity medications prescribed by medical doctors. Surgery allotted by insurance corporations includes bariatric and gastric bypass surgery.
Obamacare will essentially force Americans to lose weight through incentives provided by employers and insurance corporations. How this control measure is implemented depends on the individual plans selected by customers.
With screening and counseling being offered without co-payments under the preventative services benefit clause in Obamacare, action against obesity will be taken.
Kathleen Sebelius, Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) said that "the reforms in the healthcare law ensure consumers will have access to better coverage at a lower cost in 2014."
The Obama administration has released guidelines that will be implemented by January 2014 and explain what type of programs employers can use as incentives to make sure their employees get healthy.
According to the get healthy guidelines:
- Employers can charge employees 30% more to cover group cost plans
- Employees that quit smoking, lose weight, lower cholesterol and lower body mass index (BMI) can receive a cessation of up to 50%
- Employers can monetarily punish employees for unhealthy habits and reward those who try to change their ways
- Employees can be told to attend a health education seminar
House Representative Paul Ryan pointed out : "This law needlessly raises healthcare costs. And this law will cause millions of people to lose the health insurance that they have, that they want to keep."
when the original "Obamacare" bill was written up literally overnight and was reported to contain about 2000 pages of regulations. But now I am sure that the more lengthy the paper, more room for (mis) interpretation, a situation which will likely be with us for quite some time.