8 ms·

The Republicans labeling the affordable health care act "Obamacare" and attacking it from day one was a significant propaganda victory, as we can see. In fact t

• banku_brougham 10y ago
  The other big succesful 'dark PR' campaign I can think of was the tabacco companies' attacks on health research on smoking. Probably this is a perenial strategy in societies that require the consent of the populace for government actions. Actually I suppose almost all wars fit this model.
• deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
• theseatoms 10y ago
  The labelling of ACA as "Obamacare" will allow Republicans to save face while they preserve much of the substance of the law. Personally, I say leave it to the states...
  • banku_brougham 10y ago
    So many things could be better or much worse if left to the states.
    • dexterdog 10y ago
      What would be worse except maybe the military?
      • burkaman 10y ago
        Education would probably be worse in some states if there were no federal standards or oversight.
      • wlesieutre 10y ago
        Voting Rights Act of 1965?
        • dexterdog 10y ago
          Funny, I thought people do nothing but complain about what a mess voting is.
          • wlesieutre 10y ago
            It's not perfect, no. But the 1965 act is specifically the part that protects voting rights of minorities. Would voting be better without that? Especially given that one party has turned voter suppression into an integral part of their strategy for winning elections? If it were left up to states, a large portion of them would deliberately not have these rules. And the nonstandardization of rules across the other states would mean that even in cases where they existed, the laws and associated court precedents would be a gigantic mess, making it a lot harder to litigate cases. For reference on situations where minority voting rights are still a problem: http://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/ohio-hit-lawsuit-over-gop-passed-voting-restrictions http://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/ohio-hit-lawsuit-over-gop-passed-... http://www.southeastgeorgiatoday.com/index.php/8-newsbreaks/35373-georgia-settles-voting-rights-lawsuit http://www.southeastgeorgiatoday.com/index.php/8-newsbreaks/... http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2016/07/federal-appeals-court-strikes-controversial-north-carolina-voting-restrictions http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2016/07/federal-appeals-... http://www.theoaklandpress.com/general-news/20170111/lawsuit-detroit-suburb-denies-blacks-equal-voting-rights http://www.theoaklandpress.com/general-news/20170111/lawsuit... http://www.houstonchronicle.com/news/houston-texas/houston/article/Appeals-court-upholds-judge-s-order-in-Pasadena-10907579.php http://www.houstonchronicle.com/news/houston-texas/houston/a... https://www.justice.gov/crt/cases-raising-claims-under-section-2-voting-rights-act-0 https://www.justice.gov/crt/cases-raising-claims-under-secti... etc.
    • masonic 10y ago
      Of course. So, for those states that are better run, people will generally migrate there. Similarly, people who seek greater publicly-funded benefits will migrate to those areas that provide more.
  • geofft 10y ago
    There are a lot of things worth leaving to the states, but the way insurance works, the financial feasibility depends a lot on how big the buying group is. It's why healthcare bought on behalf of a company is cheaper and better than healthcare bought by an individual, and it's why PPACA created marketplaces for individual insurance buyers. It's almost certain there are things that are feasible when the US has a certain healthcare policy that aren't feasible on the state level. I'd guess that single payer is one of them.
  • throwaway2016a 10y ago
    Leaving it to a states is great in theory but the one thing that I think needs to be done is something that only the federal government has the power to do. Which is open up competition across borders for insurance companies and pharmaceuticals. Including international borders but I'd be happy just to be able to buy insurance from the state next door.
• dexterdog 10y ago
  Well, putting 'affordable' in the name was its own version of propaganda.
  • kingkawn 10y ago
    if you define propaganda as any effort to be convincing of anything then there's nothing left that isn't it anywhere, in which case the point was not to point out propaganda but to be right about everything
  • ethbro 10y ago
    A lot of the failures of the law I put on Republicans. They knew it was going to pass, and yet they decided to ignore it for political reasons instead of working to fix some of its broken provisions. https://www.senate.gov/legislative/LIS/roll_call_lists/roll_call_vote_cfm.cfm?congress=111&session=1&vote=00396#position https://www.senate.gov/legislative/LIS/roll_call_lists/roll_...
    • bigtex 10y ago
      Interesting, so the law passed with zero Republican support but yet it is their fault for all of it's problems. Maybe the Democrats should be responsible for its failure?
      • QuantumAphid 10y ago
        Zero Republican support was baked-into it from the start. Repubs that did work with the democrats, and had their feedback incorporated (161 amendments) were threatened by House leadership (see: Chuck Grassley, Gang of Six). Obamacare is largely a success. Even the current CBO report shows that it has been working well. The program is only a few years old and needs some tweaking. Its main shortcoming is that it is slightly underfunded, and needs more enrollments from younger people. Also pretty shitty that 19 states would rather see their constituents suffer than to allow the federal government to expand Medicaid for them.
      • 467568985476 10y ago
• grondilu 10y ago
  Isn't it a common practice to find nicknames for pieces of legislation? In that case, the Republican found one that stuck. The name "Obamacare" is nothing more than a portmanteau of "Obama" and "Health care", and as such it does not entail any political message per se, except that it's supposed to name an health care legislation in which Barack Obama was particularly involved. So, calling the use of this word "propaganda" seems highly incorrect. In fact, IIRC Barack Obama himself appropriated the name and said something like "I don't mind this to be called Obamacare, because I do care" (I'm paraphrasing).
  • haswell 10y ago
    For a large portion of the population, "Obama" is/was an inherently negative word. While it's true that the word simply indicates it was "his" plan, this is also intrinsically linked to extreme negativity and calling it Obamacare was extremely loaded. I can understand why this could be seen as propaganda. In response to your edit, I think this was a good way for Obama to take things in stride. But it doesn't change the inherent negativity for most.
  • deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
  • soneil 10y ago
    It seems to be increasingly common to make the name of the legislation propaganda in itself. Naming the ACA 'affordable' would be an immediate example - a less contentious example would be "USA PATRIOT" (Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism Act), as attacking PATRIOT immediately sounds politically worse than attacking state surveillance. Countering 'Affordable' with 'Obamacare' was a very successful propaganda win. Affordable sounds good, Obama sounds bad (to the intended audiences). That you can realistically ask people to take sides between the two (whether they prefer Obamacare or ACA) illustrates this perfectly (if Kimmel is a source, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N6m7pWEMPlA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N6m7pWEMPlA)
• botexpert 10y ago
  + a huge percentage of people who think global warming is caused by humans and happening do nothing about it. the sales of cars are rising, the gas is being bought, the whole USA is under a 24/7 air conditioning, the gluttony is at its highest, the production and consumption of chicken and beef too, etc. From my perspective the difference between believers and non-believers is invisible.
  • zzalpha 10y ago
    Eh, changes like that don't happen at the individual level. Crime is at historic lows not because people decided to be less violent, but because of socioeconomic changes (and possibly the elimination of common sources of lead). Rivers stopped catching on fire in the US not because individuals decided to stop dumping chemicals into rivers, but because Americans took collective action in the form or regulations and fines to force better behaviour through financial consequences. The reality is pollution is an externality, and a very invisible one. Individuals are unlikely to make decisions that impact it because they don't directly bear the costs. And the reality is our societies aren't structured to make it easy to avoid polluting. Try living in an average American city without burning gas in a car, or oil/gas to heat or cool your home. It's an impossible ask for a typical middle class family, let alone someone lower on the socioeconomic scale. There's a reason things like carbon taxes and green subsidies are very attractive: it allows you to incentivize the behaviour we want to see by baking in the cost of those externalities into people's decisions.
    • botexpert 10y ago
      Yes, but doing business as usual will never bring collective action. Why would politicians tax energy usage if no people demand it? Why would politicians tax meat if no one demands it? This kind of appeal to futility only brings change when consequences happen.
      • zzalpha 10y ago
        A lot of people are demanding it. Heck, some countries like Canada are actively passing things like carbon taxes. But when a large portion of the populace (and thus elected officials) doesn't believe there's a problem in the first place, it's a little tough to take collective action, which brings us back to the original point.
• poopsintub 10y ago
  I don't think you can blame anyone for this. Someone coined the term, and it seemed like everyone ran with it. People probably don't know it's the same thing because premiums keep rising. It has never been affordable.
• ouid 10y ago
  Some more propaganda victories by the right: "Inheritance tax is double dipping"- if you inherit a fortune in unrealized capital gains, the government essentially forgives that tax debt. I.e. if you were to cash out at that value, you wouldn't have to pay anything. "Americans are obscenely litigious"- This, as far as I know, started with the McDonald's case. Since then there has been a steady stream of headlines of people successfully suing businesses for things that were seemingly ridiculous. None of these cases were as ridiculous as they were made out to be. "The income tax credit on mortgage interest makes it cheaper for americans to buy a home"- The average monthly cost for a home is whatever the market says the monthly cost for a home is. And in fact, because the tax brackets are stratified, and the mortgage interest deduction is mutually exclusive with the standard deduction, more expensive homes rose in value more, as a result of the legislation, than less expensive homes.