Conservative groups pile on ObamaCare ahead of Sebelius hearing

 Conservative groups are piling on ObamaCare’s struggles ahead of a congressional grilling of Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, releasing new polls and web ads to push for a delay in the law’s requirement that all individuals buy health insurance or pay a penalty.

{mosads}The conservative YG Network, a group created by former staffers of House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.), is out with a web ad parodying the company behind ObamaCare’s dysfunctional exchange website that falls somewhere between Office Space and SportsCenter’s ads.

Republicans smell blood in the water over ObamaCare’s many struggles, and have zeroed in on the exchange website’s problems as well as reports that some are being forced to choose new health plans, something President Obama and administration officials repeatedly denied would happen. Sebelius’s scheduled testimony in front of the House Energy & Commerce Committee offers them a chance to create more bad headlines about the law.

The spoof shows an employee of the firm designing the website receiving, to his chagrin, a 1980s-era computer and floppy disks to work on the site. “Are you kidding me? I thought we had like a $600 million budget. What is this?” complains the office worker in the ad, which concludes with the tongue-in-cheek hashtag #faxobama, asking people demand a delay in ObamaCare’s individual mandate. 

The ads, targeted at younger voters, are running on YouTube and XBox as well as some “high-visibility websites,” according to the group.

“Middle-class Americans were already wary of Obamacare for good reasons, but this month’s disastrous rollout, coupled with the fact that millions of Americans are now losing their existing coverage, has folks in a state of pure disbelief,” said YG Network spokesman Chris Bond. “Not only do we have a $600 million Obamacare website that doesn’t work, but the real takeaway here is, if these guys can’t even run a website, how on earth are they going to run the rest of this complicated, costly healthcare overhaul?”

The conservative group Crossroads GPS is out with polling showing that 70 percent of Americans support a delay in the individual mandate in light of “significant problems that have been reported with launching Obamacare and difficulties people have experienced in signing up for coverage,” with 55 percent strongly favoring a delay.

The poll was conducted from Oct. 27-29 by Republican pollster Glen Bolger.

On Tuesday, the Republican National Committee released web ads parodying the program that are reminiscent of Apple’s attacks on PC.

This post was updated at 12:20 p.m.