President Barack Obama predicted Thursday that once the federal health care law is up and running, Republicans won’t be so eager to refer to it as “Obamacare.”
Speaking in Largo, Md., Obama cited former President Ronald Reagan’s evolution on Medicare as a precedent for current opponents to the Affordable Care Act. A 1961 recording released on behalf of the American Medical Association featured Reagan predicting that Medicare would lead to a socialist dystopia in America.
“But the good news is I believe eventually they’ll come around because Medicare and Social Security faced the same kind of criticism,” Obama said. “Before Medicare came into law one Republican warned that, ‘One of these days, you and I are gonna spend our sunset years telling our children and our children’s children what it once was like in America when men were free.’ That was Ronald Reagan, and eventually Ronald Reagan came around to Medicare and thought it was pretty good and actually helped make it better. So that’s what’s gonna happen with the Affordable Care Act and once it’s working well, I guarantee you they will not call it Obamacare.”
“Here is a prediction for you: a few years from now, when people are using this to get coverage and everyone’s feeling pretty good about all the choices and competition that they’ve got, there are gonna be a whole bunch of folks who say, “Yeah, yeah, I always thought this provision was excellent. I voted for that thing,'” he continued. “You watch. It will not be called Obamacare.”
A poll earlier this month found that Republicans actually like the 2010 law more when it’s referred to by the Affordable Care Act, its official title, than when it’s called Obamacare.
