The Obama administration doled out more than $77 million to promote the former president’s signature health care legislation in what could be its final full year of existence, contracts obtained by The Post on Sunday reveal.
They show the federal government contracted with Democratic-leaning p.r. firm Weber Shandwick to spend $74.15 million on July 28, 2016, and another $3.69 million on Sept. 9, 2016, promoting the plan.
Of that, $64 million funded an advertising blitz — including TV, digital and radio — $4 million went to creative development and production, $5 million to direct response marketing, $2 million to campaign strategy, $1 million to branding and $1.5 million to encourage small business enrollment.
An official of the current White House dismissed the Obama administration’s last-ditch efforts to try to swell enrollment numbers.
“Tens of millions in hard-earned taxpayer funds spent on TV ads won’t sell a fundamentally flawed approach to health care,” the official told The Post.
The Weber Shandwick contract was signed by Pam Jenkins, president of the firm. Its chairman, Jack Leslie, was picked by Obama in 2009 to be chairman of the US African Development Foundation.
Leslie donated $1,000 to Obama’s 2012 re-election campaign and $2,700 in December 2015 to Hillary Clinton’s failed presidential campaign.
Jenkins and Leslie did not provide comment.
The revelations come as Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price defended the House replacement plan’s financial impact on Americans.
“I firmly believe that nobody will be worse off financially in the process that we’re going through,” Price said on NBC’s “Meet The Press.” “Understanding that they’ll have choices that they can select the kind of coverage that they want for themselves and for their family, not the government forces them to buy.”
But Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) urged his House colleagues not to “walk the plank” and pass the bill because the GOP would suffer the consequences in the next election. Cotton told ABC’s “This Week” that he believes the measure will cause premiums to rise and price people out of the health care system.
“I’m afraid that if they vote for this bill, they’re going to put the House majority at risk next year,” he said.