WHATS THE NAME OF YOUR INSURANCE???.... Whats in a Name? Affordable Care Act vs. Obamacare Its a truism in politics that labels matter. When President Barack Obama and his Democratic allies in the Senate and House passed healthcare reform legislation in 2010, they developed an official name for the law that they thought would convey the positive benefits of the bill: Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. That name has often been shortened to Affordable Care Act in the years since its passage, but the bill has also come to be known as Obamacare, a name frequently used by Obama himself. Others simply call it the healthcare law. The political news site Politico called our attention to the importance of these labels in a story on Tuesday reporting that the Obama administration has shifted to a sole focus on the label “Affordable Care Act.” Politico notes that, “The president didn’t say Obamacare once during his nearly hour-long news conference last week, while he referred to the Affordable Care Act a dozen times.” It is likely that White House strategists developed the new approach -- perhaps based on internal polling -- under the assumption that the more formal name “Affordable Care Act” would help in the current toxic environment of the negative publicity associated with the troubled rollout of the healthcare exchanges. Additionally, The White House may think that, at this juncture, it is best not to directly reinforce Obamas association with the law. New Gallup research helps shed light on this issue. We have just completed an experimental test of four different ways to label the healthcare law. The results show that labels do make at least a marginal difference in the degree to which respondents approve or disapprove of the law. Gallup read the same basic question to four randomly selected groups of the Gallup Daily tracking sample each night between Nov. 4-17 -- but with four different descriptions of the law. A total of 1,725 to 1,885 respondents received each version of the question
Posted on: Sun, 01 Dec 2013 08:32:18 +0000
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