White House Instructs Cabinet Members to Use Commencement Speeches to Talk About How Great Obamacare Is

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As worries continue to grow that “Obamacare” will permanently stain President Obama’s legacy, White House officials have been instructed to use college commencement ceremonies as an opportunity to praise the health care law.

“To counter the criticism, the White House has told all Cabinet members and senior officials to use commencement speeches to drive home for graduating college students and their parents the benefits they gain from a provision of the law that allows young adults to stay on their family’s insurance plans until they turn 26,” Bloomberg reports.

And it appears the president’s political allies have no problem complying with this request.

“That’s a big thing for a young person coming out of school,” said Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) on Thursday.

She took extra time to talk about how great it is that the law contains a provision that allows grown adults to stay on their parents’ insurance policies until they’re 26-years-old.

“We just think it’s really going to be liberating,” she said.

The push to encourage young Americans to love the bill, as the Washington Examiner’s Joel Gehrke notes, stems from the Obama administration’s fear that they will refuse to participate in the health insurance exchanges once their parents kick them off the plan, thus crippling the law.

“Here is the specific problem: Insurance companies worry that young people, especially young men, already think they are invincible, and they are bewildered about the health-care reform in general and exchanges in particular,” Ezekiel Emanuel, the president’s health policy czar during the Obamacare debate, wrote in the Wall Street Journal this week.

“They may tune out, forego purchasing health insurance and opt to pay a penalty instead when their taxes come due. The consequence would be a disproportionate number of older and sicker people purchasing insurance, which will raise insurance premiums and, in turn, discourage more people from enrolling. This reluctance to enroll would damage a key aspect of reform,” he adds.

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