Obama Turns to 'Funny or Die' to Promote ObamaCare

The White House has turned to an unlikely medium to promote ObamaCare: funny web videos. The Obama administration teamed up with popular video site Funny or Die (you may remember it from such videos as "The Wire: The Musical") to create some 20 projects to promote the Affordable Care Act and get more young people enrolled in the new health insurance marketplaces, the LA Times reports. The alliance resulted in one particularly surreal-sounding meeting between Obama and celebrities like Amy Poehler, Jason Derulo, Michael Cera, and Jennifer Hudson in the Roosevelt Room.

But even with the president on its side, Funny or Die's president of production says it has been a mammoth marketing task to take on. "The simplest way to put it was, they had spent all this time and energy and money on the biggest movie of their lives and had no marketing budget in which to promote it," he says. "I just thought that was the craziest thing I'd ever heard." Up against them are a number of powerful, well-funded conservative groups working just as hard to convince Americans to opt out of ObamaCare. One group, Generation Opportunity, released its own satirical YouTube video this week, amassing over a million views so far. The first Funny or Die ObamaCare video will premiere on Sept. 30. (More Funny or Die stories.)