Obamacare’s bulletin announcements: “The body is a temple and it must be insured”—UPDATED

From The Weekly Standard: 

In an effort to sign up as many consumers as possible for insurance under the Affordable Care Act (or Obamacare), the Obama administration has gone to extraordinary lengths to partner with churches and other faith-based groups, even publishing sample church bulletin inserts, flyers, and scripts for announcements, as well as “talking points.” These materials are part of the “Second Sunday & Faith Weekend of Action Toolkit,” which is available on the website of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS).

From the beginning, HHS has sought to develop partnerships with faith-based organizations to promote the Obamacare. This “toolkit” has been available since 2013. However, the details of these partnerships have largely escaped the attention of the national media. The Second Sunday & Faith Weekend of Action program encourages churches to use the second Sunday of each month during open enrollment to hold informational meetings and sign-up events.

…In at least one case, a marketplace even invoked scripture as part of the enrollment push. In March 2014, D.C. HealthLink, the insurance marketplace for the nation’s capital assigned a theme to their Weekend of Action, “The Body is a Temple and it Must Be Insured,” drawing on I Corinthians 6:19, which says that “your bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit.”

Read more and see sample announcements here. 

UPDATE: I wondering if the Republicans had ever tried anything like this. Of course, they have. From The New York Times in 2004:

The Bush campaign is seeking to enlist thousands of religious congregations around the country in distributing campaign information and registering voters, according to an e-mail message sent to many members of the clergy and others in Pennsylvania.

Liberal groups charged that the effort invited violations of the separation of church and state and jeopardized the tax-exempt status of churches that cooperated. Some socially conservative church leaders also said they would advise pastors against participating in such a partisan effort.

But Steve Schmidt, a spokesman for the Bush administration, said ”people of faith have as much right to participate in the political process as any other community” and that the e-mail message was about ”building the most sophisticated grass-roots presidential campaign in the country’s history.”

In the message, dated early Tuesday afternoon, Luke Bernstein, coalitions coordinator for the Bush campaign in Pennsylvania, wrote: ”The Bush-Cheney ’04 national headquarters in Virginia has asked us to identify 1,600 ‘Friendly Congregations’ in Pennsylvania where voters friendly to President Bush might gather on a regular basis.”

In each targeted ”place of worship,” Mr. Bernstein continued, without mentioning a specific religion or denomination, ”we’d like to identify a volunteer who can help distribute general information to other supporters.” He explained: ”We plan to undertake activities such as distributing general information/updates or voter registration materials in a place accessible to the congregation.”