Grant aimed at promoting ACA to TV viewers

LOS ANGELES – The health care overhaul might get a Hollywood rewrite.

The California Endowment, a private foundation that is spending millions to promote President Barack Obama’s signature law, recently provided a $500,000 grant to ensure TV writers and producers have information about the Affordable Care Act that can be stitched into plot lines watched by millions.

The aim is to produce compelling prime-time narratives that encourage Americans to enroll, especially the young and healthy, Hispanics and other key demographic groups needed to make the overhaul a success.

“We know from research that when people watch entertainment television, even if they know it’s fiction, they tend to believe that the factual stuff is actually factual,” said Martin Kaplan of the University of Southern California’s Norman Lear Center, which received the grant.

The public typically gets as much, if not more, information about current events from favorite TV programs as mainstream news outlets, Kaplan said, so “people learn from these shows.”

California Republican strategist Jonathan Wilcox, who has taught a course on politics and celebrity at USC, said the attempt to engage Hollywood was coming too late to influence views, and he doubted fictionalized TV would play into families’ decisions about health care.

“This is an attempt to use entertainment pop culture to fix a political challenge,” he said. “It will be received as a partisan political message, no matter how cleverly it’s delivered.”

Hollywood is known for supporting Democratic candidates and causes – Will Ferrell and Amy Poehler are among a long list of celebrities who have made a pitch for the law – but there is no guarantee the entertainment industry will be in lockstep with the White House on health care.

Just last week, a “South Park” episode was largely devoted to mocking a malfunctioning website billed as a “simple, integrated portal” for health services. When it’s being demonstrated for students, a laptop instead starts playing Lionel Richie’s “All Night Long (All Night).”

About 16 percent of Americans are uninsured and surveys have shown many still know little or nothing about the health care law even though sign-ups for insurance have started. The challenge for the law’s supporters is to connect with the millions of Americans who for whatever reason haven’t paid attention.

The 18-month grant, to the Lear Center’s Hollywood Health & Society program, will be used for briefings with staff from television shows and to track health overhaul-related depictions on prime-time and Spanish-language television.