The Republican National Committee (RNC) is building a database with the names of those who received insurance cancellation notices under ObamaCare, with the hope of capturing voters who believe they’ve been negatively affected by the healthcare law.
{mosads}An RNC spokesman wouldn’t provide any further details on the initiative for fear of giving away the strategy, but confirmed what Chairman Reince Priebus first told The Washington Examiner over the weekend.
“Getting that information [on plan cancellations] and having good data as to who votes, who doesn’t vote, voter registration, party affiliation, consumer characteristics, cross-referenced with that kind of information, I think, is important for us to have,” Priebus said.
Priebus also told The Examiner that the RNC was bringing in “top engineers” from social media giants like Facebook, LinkedIn and Yahoo to work on the project.
Republicans are seeking to keep Democrats on the run from ObamaCare as the 2014 midterm election cycle heats up, and drawing attention to the president’s broken promise that ‘If you like your healthcare plan you can keep it’ has been a primary focus of those efforts.
By some estimates, insurers sent out 5 million notices to consumers in the last year that their policies would be discontinued. Many of those didn’t meet the minimum coverage requirements under the Affordable Care Act.
Still, the politics of the cancellation notices is more complex than it appears.
A great deal of those cancellations went out with notices that the consumers didn’t need to take action and would automatically be enrolled in a similar plan.
And not everyone who received a cancellation notice liked the policy they had previously, while still others may find that they like their new ones better.