The official name is unwiedly and you do have to call it something. But the nickname does not relate to Medicare. It’s an update on Hillarycare, the derisive nickname for her health care proposal during the Clinton administration. For the most part I don’t take people who say “Obamacare” seriously.
Its certainly a take-off Hillarycare, but Hillarycare was derisive because Hillary was unpopular and unelected. Obama had the majority of the electorate vote for him semi-recently and breaks even in popularity ratings.
FWIW, I use Obamacare occasionally and I’m a big supporter of the bill. If there was a better nickname in wide use, I’d use that, but Obamacare doesn’t seem particularly derisive, so I stick with that.
Beats “Death-panels” or “Job-Destroying Healthcare Act”
"Obamacare"is deliberately intended to suggest that the law involves some kind of government provided health care. It does not.
Please people - it’s the “Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act”. Obviously that’s too unwieldy for normal conversation so call it something like “the Affordable Care Act” or simply “health care reform”. "Obamacare is a derogatory and politically loaded term introduced by opponents. The want you to use that term because they want it to be about Obama and they want people who are frightened of Obama to be frightened of health care reform.
If you’re trying to have an objective discussion you shouldn’t use it any more than you should use the term “death tax”.
What? Did your company provide coverage for the spouse for free, prior to 2011? At my company, there has always been an increased insurance premium for anyone who is not the employee (e.g., employee only $150/month; employee + spouse $200/month; employee + 1 dependent $175/month, etc.) Or is this $500/yr in addition to the “employee+spouse” premium?
The extra amount is on top of the additional premium. So I pay the additional premium + a flat $500 extra to have her covered. For my children, I only have to pay the additional premium.
It was called Hillarycare because she was unpopular and unelected. Obama is the president and he’s more popular, but the nickname does imply it’s government-run health care. And for that matter, Obama was behind the reform push but left a lot of the specifics to Congress.
This is a political term, too. It’s less loaded and the bias is positive instead of negative, but it’s not free of bias.
I’m not sure that follows, IIRC Tricare and parts of Medicare are provided by private insurance companies.
But in anycase, gov’t provided healthcare plans poll well, so if the *care construction does lead people to believe the ACA provides one, thats not really gonna harm the popularity of the act.
Well, I’m self-employed and until last year was paying $900 per month. The reason was that they claimed I had a pre-existing condition. Just because I had injured my shoulder years ago and there was a chance that I might have to have an operation. Even though that I didn’t need the operation and have been playing basketball, tennis, biking, for years after the consultation without incident. Bastards. I reapplied about a year ago to both Blue Cross and Blue Shield of California. Blue Cross: $300/month. Blue Shield: I think it was over $1,200.
From recent news, I believe that the term ObamaCare has been replaced with “The Job-Killing Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act”. :rolleyes:
Self-employed here and we buy insurance through a group (freelancersunion.com). Our premiums went up this year, and I too am going to directly attribute the increase to Obamacare. It’s so fucking insidious that it caused our rates to go up the year before, too (as he was just planning on implementing the thing), and the year before that (it was part of his electoral platform), and the year before that (he was considering a run; the move was a likely direction he would take), and the year before that (heathcare reform was due to come up in the next political cycle).
We had different insurance before that, so I can’t say how our rates would have gone up in relation to Obamacare back then, but sure enough, any increase would have been directly attributable to Obamacare.
Because Obama completely took over health care (and the auto industry, which is why I refuse to buy a new car), any rate increase is easily attributable to him. Personally.
And what is your definition of “Obamacare”?
Don’t forget to change the oil on your irony meter every 3,000 miles.
Every 2000 miles with heavy use.
Actually, my definition of Obamacare included a public option and a host of other reforms that were [del]debated[/del]shouted down.
But in the end I think the Obamacare moniker may end up being a good thing. As more and more people benefit from the limited advancements it added (and wouldn’t it be funny if the public option was eventually added as a result of the lawsuits and whatnot?), associating improvements with Obama will be a good thing legacy-wise.
If we could tax lies and stupidity, we’d have enough money to provide healthcare to everyone. What I don’t get is why people don’t realize that if “your side” has to make up a bunch of lies to support their point it’s probably not a good idea to begin with.
I am a supporter of Obamacare, and I approve of the term. Sure it is used as a pejorative by opponents today, but this will establish the term in the national dialog, and when it succeeds, it will serve as a fantastic legacy to the man.
To the OP: Unless your friend is a child, then none of the provisions of Obama care have come into effect yet. Thus your friend is either breathing or blowing smoke.
What Kevbo said. Now that it’s passed, and the failure of the repeal effort is a foregone conclusion, Obamacare has graduated. It’s no longer just a convenient way of filtering out people who have adopted the Limbaugh view of the law; it’s a good name.
It was never the case that there was anything wrong with the term Obamacare, although it wasn’t particularly accurate; it was just that the people who used it were dicks.
This is incorrect. A lot of provisions have come into effect.
However, it’s also true that no provision that has come into effect, nor any that will come into effect at any later date, will have the impact this guy claims.
I say this is false.
My wife works for a major medical center in central New Jersey. I’m in health care but don’t work for a hospital. I am on my wife’s medical plan because her benefits are better than my organization offers. She also gets something called ‘professional courtesy’, which we’ve found to be invaluable, but that’s another story.
Anyway, my point is my employer is not charging me because I’m not on my organization’s plan. Also, my wife can easily switch over to my plan, if I wanted to do something so ridiculously foolhardy, with no repercussions from her employer.