An aberration or typical?

A friend had shared one of those interesting screen shots of a comment thread where the names are blocked out to protect people's privacy, not to mention saving them from public humiliation for being idiots. Some poor sap had done a comment about how happy he was that evil, evil Obamacare was going to be repealed by the U.S. Congress soon. Someone asked why he was so happy about it when he had benefited from Obamacare. His response was that he didn't have Obamacare; his health care benefits were thanks to the Affordable Care Act.

The stupid, it burns. The poor sap did not realize the Affordable Care Act and Obamacare are the exact same thing. Obamacare is what the Republicans started calling the ACA because they were canny enough to recognize that it's pretty hard to successfully badmouth something called the Affordable Care Act. You know, people would kind of wonder just what was wrong with the idea of making care affordable?

Unfortunately, the Democrats and others who supported the Affordable Care Act and do not want to see it repealed have done a truly piss poor job of branding. They allowed the nickname Obamacare to go relatively unchallenged. Even worse, they haven't been exactly enthusiastic about touting all the good stuff that has happened under the Affordable Care Act, like allowing young adults to stay on their parentts' insurance plans until they're 26. I actually know someone who benefited in a huge way from that provision; she was a recent college graduate who hadn't found a fulltime, permanent job yet so in the pre-ACA days would have been uninsured. She got hit with a major medical problem, one that involved multiple trips to specialists, surgery, and follow-up treatments. Pre-ACA she'd have been shit out of luck, her parents would have had to go into debt in a huge way if she was able to get seen by specialists at all (surprising numbers of doctors flat out refuse to see you if you cannot provide proof of insurance in advance), and odds are she'd now be dead. Obamacare saved her life.

But I digress. Although there's been a lot of recent talk about all the good stuff the ACA has done, attempts at saving it are probably coming too late. Too many Republicans have spent the last six years telling their constituents how evil Obamacare is. End result? Poor ignorant saps like that fellow who's been getting mocked on the Internet for his cluelessness. Too many  voters want Obamacare gone because they don't realize that it's the same thing as the legislation they appreciate, the ACA. Like I said, the stupid, it burns.