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President Barack Obama and loyal Democrats once embraced the term Obamacare to sell the American people on health care reform.

Not anymore.

With the president’s approval ratings at record lows, a broken website and Obama under fire for his pledge that people could keep their plans, the “Affordable Care Act” has returned.

The president didn’t say “Obamacare” once during his nearly hourlong news conference last week, while he referred to the “Affordable Care Act” a dozen times. House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi went so far as to correct David Gregory on “Meet the Press” Sunday on the proper terminology. And White House talking points distributed to Democrats and obtained by POLITICO repeatedly refer to the Affordable Care Act in suggested sound bites, not Obamacare.

Calling it the Affordable Care Act has advantages for Democrats seeking to defend health care reform while still criticizing the bungled White House rollout. The phrase polls better than Obamacare — and people have responded more positively to the law’s benefits when they haven’t been told they come from Obamacare.

“You want the law to have approval rating higher than POTUS has,” a Democratic official said Monday.

“Obamacare” started out as a pejorative term during Obama’s first campaign, and Republicans, especially the tea party, embraced it during protests and rallies against the health care bill. The media generally steered clear as well — using phrases such as “health care reform” to describe the issue.


But Obama last year reappropriated the term for himself, making the phrase a staple of his stump speech and hawking “I (heart) Obamacare” bumper stickers.

“We passed Obamacare — yes, I like the term — we passed it because I do care, and I want to put these choices in your hands where they belong,” Obama said at a typical stop in Iowa last October.

Now, the phrase is vanishing from official use. White House website posts in July (“Obamacare in Three Words: Saving People Money”) and late September (“What Obamacare Means for You”) called the health care law the O-word. But now HealthCare.gov is almost entirely scrubbed of “Obamacare” and the law is called the Affordable Care Act in nearly every instance. Health insurance exchanges run by states don’t use the term Obamacare at all.


A 22-page White House document issued to Democratic Sunday show guests uses the word Obamacare only under a “general points” subheading and in a section debunking a purported myth that increased Medicaid enrollment would lead to an older, sicker population signing up for health care through the exchanges.

Instead, the document contains standard White House health care talking points: “The Affordable Care Act is more than a website”; “We have a great product that people like and tons of interest in the product”; and Obama’s “administrative proposal will give consumers more information and choices, including keeping their old plans.”

The White House talking points suggest that Democrats respond to GOP attacks by pointing to October, when the government was shut down and Congress was staring at a potential default.

“The GOP has an obsession with the Affordable Care Act,” the White House talking points read. “They were willing to shut down the government and threaten our economy and full faith and credit just to try to stop it. That didn’t work.”

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Originally posted by Niki2:
Are you JUST learning that politicians use words to try and influence the public? Poor BABIES!

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Originally posted by BIGDAMNNOBODY:
Suspiciously quiet on the left front.

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