Roll Out the Barrels? Obamacare Funds to Sponsor Bourbon Festivals
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Walter Bibikow / DanitaDelimont.com Danita Delimont Photography/Newscom
One day after The Washington Post reported that federal taxpayer dollars could be used to promote Obamacare through porta-potties, the same outlet posted this e-mail from a Kentucky state official on how the Commonwealth plans to use federal funds to promote Obamacare:
I briefly scanned a schedule of upcoming mobile tour events and below few [sic] that are attended by a large number of young people: regional sporting events, such as the Lexington Legends and Louisville Bats games; the Goettafest and Riverfest in Newport and Covington; the Kentucky Bourbon Festival in Bardstown, Ky.; the Bourbon Chase; Oktoberfest in Newport; the Bourbon and Blues Festival in Owensboro; a couple of half marathons in various locations; the Iron Man competition, etc. We also expect that Navigators will be doing outreach on college campuses.
In other words, Kentucky plans a beer-and-bourbon tour to try to attract young people to enroll in Obamacare. (Maybe that’s what the porta-potties are for.)
The ironies abound in this announcement. Last year, the New York Post reported that New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg proposed using community transformation grant funds from Obamacare to “reduc[e] alcohol retail outlet density and illegal alcohol.” So as Kentucky is using Obamacare funds to promote alcohol consumption, New York City wants to use Obamacare funds to discourage it. Apparently, the left hand doesn’t know what the far-left hand is doing.
Second, alcohol abuse costs taxpayers billions of dollars every year. A 2011 Centers for Disease Control study found that alcohol abuse cost federal, state, and local taxpayers a total of $94.2 billion each year. To the extent that these Obamacare promotional activities encourage alcohol abuse, they will inevitably impose new burdens on taxpayers—and raise overall health costs, contradicting the law’s stated purpose.
Just as important, these types of theatrical “marketing” activities represent a misuse of taxpayer dollars at a time of record debt and deficits. Congress should tell the Administration to stop handing out Obamacare grants like drunken sailors and refuse to spend a single dime funding Obamacare.