As health-care law turns 1, supporters using occasion to shape its image

By Amy Goldstein and N.C. Aizenman,
WashPost
Tuesday, March 22

This week, a loose federation of left-leaning groups is convening nearly 200 gatherings to peddle the virtues of health-care reform. A women’s speak-out in Philadelphia. A small-business round-table discussion in Albuquerque. A fish fry for seniors in Columbia, S.C. From the Obama administration alone, 42 officials are fanning out to events in 22 states.

The choreography coast to coast is a birthday party, of sorts, to mark the year that has elapsed since President Obama signed into law the broadest changes to the nation’s health-care system in nearly half a century. But the commemoration is as much a strategy for image-shaping as a reflection of the new reality on the ground.

A year after a titanic partisan battle in Congress yielded a 2,073-page statute, the law exists in what one seasoned health-care lobbyist called “a very weird place. It’s like we have two worlds.”

In one, federal officials are working at a fevered pace, writing regulations, planning innovations for the delivery of care, and giving states grants and guidance. That complex work is “even a little ahead” of expectations, said Urban Institute President Robert D. Reischauer, an authority on health-care policy.

(More here.)

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