I thought this piece at the WashPost was interesting:
There’s been a major development in health-care politics over the last few months. The Obama administration and the Republicans came to an agreement on health reform. Not the law itself — they’re still at each other’s throats over that. But they finally agree on how to refer to it. Nowadays, both sides are calling it Obamacare. And during the first night of the Democratic National Convention, the Democrats talked about Obamacare. A lot.
That was, in itself, a surprise. Obamacare — or, as it’s officially called, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act — doesn’t poll particularly well, and it’s believed to have been a key contributor to the Republican victory in 2010. But Democrats appear to think that the politics have changed. Indeed, if the first night of the Democratic Convention is to be remembered for anything aside from Michelle Obama’s speech, it will probably be remembered as the night that Democrats stood up and began fighting for their health-care law.
Well, good for them. It certainly beats much of the divisive nonsense parties embrace at their conventions. Of course, it’s not what we need — it’s not single-payer — but it beats what the Dems’ opposition offer toward fixing our insane system of paying for health care, which is nothing.
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I still refer to it as the ACA. Just because I don’t want to appear bias towards it either way.
I predicted somewhere — maybe here — that it was a mistake for Repubs to label the ACA
“ObamaCare,” because if the thing is a success, it will forever be credited to Obama.
The GOP generally has mastery over the use of the language to spin things. That’s why we have “Job Creators” and “Small Businesses” to describe the filthy rich. That’s why we have “Class Warfare” to attack anyone who proposes ANY increase in taxes for the “Job Creators”. Or there is the “Death Tax” to denigrate the inheritance tax. But Obamacare may be one of there spin phrases that backfires. Time will tell.