Why the Obamacare Name May Have Done More Harm Than Good

The term tends to polarize people, said Kaiser Family Foundation polling director Liz Hamel

President-elect Donald Trump discusses when he plan to replace Obamacare in a news conference in New York City on Wednesday, Jan. 11, 2017.

Obamacare was such a catchy nickname for the 2010 healthcare reform law. Even President Barack Obama himself embraced it when his Republican enemies coined the term.

But it may have done more harm than good for Obama's signature policy, now in the process of being repealed. Obamacare provided an easy scapegoat for people suffering problems in a health care system that was a mess long before the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act passed Congress in 2009 without a single Republican vote, NBC News reported.

Liz Hamel, who directs polling for the independent Kaiser Family Foundation, found the name does tend to polarize people. “There is some evidence there that, to a certain extent, views on Obamacare are a proxy for views on Obama," Hamel told NBC News.

"When we said 'health reform law' they said they don't know how they feel about it. When we said Obamacare, people more easily split into pro- and con- camps," she added.

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