Opposition to the federal health care law is higher when it’s called “Obamacare” than when it’s referred to as the “Affordable Care Act,” according to findings in a CNBC poll released Thursday.
Half of the respondents were asked about “Obamacare” and the other half about the Affordable Care Act, the proper name of the 2010 law.
From CNBC:
First thing: 30 percent of the public don’t know what ACA is, vs. only 12 percent when we asked about Obamacare. More on that later.
Now for the difference: 29 percent of the public supports Obamacare compared with 22 percent who support ACA. Forty-six percent oppose Obamacare and 37 percent oppose ACA. So putting Obama in the name raises the positives and the negatives. Gender and partisanship are responsible for the differences. Men, independents and Republicans are more negative on Obamacare than ACA. Young people, Democrats, nonwhites and women are more positive on Obamacare.
Those findings follow a Fox News poll earlier this month that showed something similar: Republicans like the law more when it’s called the Affordable Care Act than when it’s referred to as Obamacare.
In a speech Thursday, Obama predicted that Republicans will eventually stop using the term.
“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 said during a speech in Largo, Md. “You watch. It will not be called Obamacare.”
