Colorado Progressive Groups Hope That Better Marketing Will Finally Fix ObamaCare's Popularity Problem
Liberal activists are once again trying to rescue ObamaCare through better messaging. Via the Denver Post:
"Obamacare" is typically the put-down conservatives use to describe theAffordable Care Act signed into law by the president in 2010, and the moniker offends some people who favor the measure.
But liberal groups in Colorado are now embracing the term, effectively saying conservatives may have shot themselves in the foot by making the health care reform law synonymous with President Obama's tenure in office.
The Colorado Consumer Health Initiative and ProgressNow Colorado Education today said they are launching a "Thanks Obamacare!" campaign to highlight the benefits of the Affordable Care Act, such as barring insurance companies from not covering people with pre-existing conditions, allowing people under 26 to stay on their parents' insurance policies and barring lifetime limits on insurance care.
I'm as skeptical of this marketing effort as I was of previous efforts to sell the law, and I suspect they'll work about as well. Last summer, for example, saw two major messaging efforts intended to convince a stubborn public that, despite a regular stream of polling evidence to the contrary, it actually liked ObamaCare quite a bit. But polls have been remarkably consistent since then: Right now, Pollster.com's trend aggregate shows that a little more than 45 percent of the public oppose the law, and about 38 percent favor it. Meanwhile, activist groups backing the law have effectively admitted that previous messaging efforts have largely failed and advised their members not to even try making an economic case for the law.
But what about the name? Is calling the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act ObamaCare an insult? I've been using the ObamaCare moniker for a while, but mostly because it's more familiar to people than PPACA. I don't mean it as a put-down. If I want to criticize the program, I can point out that it was passed using a slew of budget gimmicks that are already starting to unravel, that it's already resulted in health insurers dropping child-only policies, that the year after it passed employee health insurance premiums spiked far higher than in the few years prior to its passage, and that even the program's supporters see higher health insurance premiums ahead for many individuals as a direct result of the law. Which reminds me: Thanks, ObamaCare. Thanks a lot.
