The made-up word "Obamacare" is an insult. It is intended to be so in the minds of those who began using it. They hate Obama, so labeling it Obamacare feeds right into the hate. They won't even acknowledge it is a real law! No kidding. They won't acknowledge Barack Obama is even the legitimate President after two wins, why would anything with his name be legitimate? That's pretty much the logic.
In the last few days, comedians and talk show folks have made a mockery of this prejudice, asking people what they think of Obamacare as compared to the Affordable Care Act. Granted, this is anecdotal evidence at best, but respondents seemed to think the two things were different and the one with the real name was preferred.
The "Affordable Care Act" is a law, "Act" as in Act of Congress, I suppose? It's actually quite a clever name and appealing to Americans. Who doesn't like Affordable Care? Compare that to who doesn't like Obama?
President Obama made a huge mistake by embracing this insult, assuming the could commandeer the word and turn it to his meaning. Sorry, no dice, especially with the word "Obama" at its root. Unless he can redefine his own brand, he's never going to redefine the Obamacare negative taint. This is the same thing they did with Hillarycare. Hillary was demonized, and then Hillarycare was concocted to personalize and demonize the effort. It worked. I sure hope it doesn't work again, this time as Obamacare.
No, every Democrat, every liberal, every progressive needs to stop calling it Obamacare, a word which immediately turns off a portion of the audience. We need to call it what it is, the Affordable Care Act. Because that's what it is. And it's good for America. As long as it has Obama in the brand name, you can be guaranteed that a good 30% or more of the audience will have an automatic, visceral negative reaction. And we can't afford to give up that ground in the debate.