{"id":2207,"date":"2014-08-27T13:12:05","date_gmt":"2014-08-27T18:12:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/napervilledemocrats.org\/ntdo\/?p=2207"},"modified":"2014-08-28T12:56:51","modified_gmt":"2014-08-28T17:56:51","slug":"hating-on-obamacare-liking-its-features","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/napervilledemocrats.org\/ntdo\/hating-on-obamacare-liking-its-features\/","title":{"rendered":"Hating on “Obamacare,” Liking its Features"},"content":{"rendered":"

This has been a mystery to me for a long time, and here it comes up again: “Obamacare” polls poorly and yet the same people like the features of Obamacare<\/a>. \u00a0The problem is pretty clearly that people don’t understand what “Obamacare” is; they’re responding to random stuff they’ve heard. \u00a0(Or, in some parts of the country, there’s apparently an element of\u00a0personal hostility to our president<\/a>.)<\/p>\n

So what to do? \u00a0Republican politicians, of course, seize on the negative (false) impressions and rummage around in the lack of information, trolling for resentment. \u00a0Myself, I think we need to keep reminding people what’s in the law and of all the good it’s already doing<\/a>. \u00a0You have to hope that eventually facts will win the argument.<\/p>\n

So, here (again) is the chart from the above article<\/a> that points out a bunch of\u00a0the good\u00a0– and\u00a0popular – features that are part of “Obamacare”:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Oh, and let’s don’t forget that the number\u00a0of uninsured folks has dropped<\/a> to its lowest point in years, and medical inflation is falling<\/a>, to the point where we probably need to adjust our deficit projections dramatically downward<\/a>.<\/p>\n

All that adds up to all kinds of good news, and people should\u00a0know about it.<\/p>\n

\n

UPDATE, 8\/28: I see that EJ Dionne had some comments on the same subject<\/a>:<\/p>\n

…
\nThe most significant bit of election news last week was the decision of Sen. Mark Pryor, the embattled Arkansas Democrat, to run an ad touting his vote for the health care law<\/a> as a positive for the people of his increasingly Republican state.
\n…
\nDemocrats have never fully recovered from the Obama administration\u2019s lousy sales job for (and botched rollout of) what is, legitimately, its proudest domestic achievement. That\u2019s one reason Pryor doesn’t use the word “Obamacare” in describing what he voted for. Another is that, in many of the states with contested Senate races this year, most definitely including Arkansas, President Obama himself is so unpopular that if you attached his name to Social Security, one of the most popular programs in American history would probably drop 20 points in the polls.
\n…
\nAs one Democratic pollster told me, his focus groups showed that when voters outside the Republican base are given details about what the law does and how it works, “people come around and say, ‘That’s not so bad, what’s everybody excited about?'”
\n…
\nElection results, like scripture, can be interpreted in a variety of ways. You can bet that foes of expanding health insurance coverage will try to interpret every Republican victory as a defeat for Obamacare. But as Mark Pryor knows, the president’s unpopularity in certain parts of the country doesn’t mean that voters want to throw his greatest accomplishment overboard \u2014 even if they’d be happy to rename it.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n