Obamacare is a horrible horrible… word.
Don't get me wrong. The Affordable Care Act, the ACA, is actually a pretty damn good policy that is helping MILLIONS of people get the care they need, and finally reigning in the insurance companies. Period. Full stop.
But every time one utters the phrase Obamacare, they are perpetuating the negative intentions of the people who started that phrase. It's a pejorative. It's an insult. It's a slander. Can't you hear the whiney tone in their voices right now? OBAMAcare. Just tune in to FOX news any day of the week. It won't take long to hear the venom dripping off the commentators tongues when they hiss out "ObAAAAmacare". Obamascare?
All the right wingers and extremists hate Obama. Hearing his name evokes wincing reactions from President Obama's detractors, making "Obamacare" kryptonite to a huge chunk of the population. They reject him as our legitimate President. They are suing him for something, I guess. They are waiting for the flimsiest chance to impeach him. Anything "Obama" is immediately bad in the eyes of this tea party infused segment of the population.
And we are being complicit in perpetuating this type of disrespect when we embrace the term Obamacare. I've tried to stop using it. Not because I don't want to honor President Obama who invested basically all the political capital he had in his first term to pass the pioneering ACA, something so many other Presidents had failed at. No, I don't like it because it's a lie. "Obamacare" the word implies that there is a health care program run by the government that is called Obamacare. There is not. That was the public option, and it didn’t get in the final bill.
Seriously, how many conversations have you had to have where people say, "well I don't like that Obummercare", and you try to explain that it's not a government program, it's really just a set of rules and policies governing regular old health insurance, some expansions of popular and successful programs like Medicaid, plus some subsidies and a website that lets people shop for individual insurance policies, creating competition in a capitalist manner? You lost them from the start. It's Obamacare, therefore it is bad.
I know the President has played it cool, which is totally his deal. And when the Obamacare mantra started permeating regular conversations, he icily tried to inoculate the word by taking it as his own. And while I don't begrudge the President the right to react like that, it's not how he should act in my opinion. Because he's playing right into the hands of the people who are trying to undermine the Affordable Care Act. He is actually undermining his own policy by using this epithet.
This word must be banished from every conversation, document, talking point, speech, website, and tweet coming from those who support the President and ACA. We must get rid of Obamacare. Finally something I can agree with Republicans about. Any moniker that both pushes away tea party types and confuses lower information voters is a lose-lose name for what is actually a great policy step forward.
Now, try the phrase "AffordableCare" out for size. You might recognize that name from somewhere, yes, right from the name of the ACA itself. Where Obamacare sounds like a policy plan or government program, AffordableCare sounds like rules that make health care insurance you buy affordable and standard. It's nice when the policy name reinforces what your policy does, and in this case, AffordableCare as a name really works. AffordableCare emphasizes the best thing about the ACA, that it's designed to reign in the insurance companies and make things more affordable. Affordable is something it's really hard to say with a sneer. Who doesn't want affordable? Well, now, that would be downright Un-American!
Which word would you rather use? Obamacare? AffordableCare? Choose your weapon in the poll below.
6:03 PM PT: I'm calling a loser on the poll... the loser is "Obamacare". 55% of respondents preferred AffordableCare or ACA, while only 44% preferred Obamacare.
Sadly, no one came up with a better name in the comments.