From: Lead Slinger
Date: 5/6/2013
Time: 9:49:28 AM
The core principal of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (aka “ObamaCare”) is based on a plan popularized by The Heritage Foundation, a Conservative think tank in 1989. In 1993, this idea of an “individual mandate” was proposed by several Republicans, including then Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich, who said “I am for people, individuals — exactly like automobile insurance — individuals having health insurance and being required to have health insurance, and I’m prepared to vote for a voucher system which will give individuals, on a sliding scale, a government subsidy, to ensure that everyone as individuals has health insurance.”
As late as 2007, Republicans and Democrats introduced a bipartisan bill that included an individual mandate – citizens taking responsibility for their own welfare, using the free market instead of government programs, and when government aid is essential, providing it by encouraging free market competition – all solid Conservative principals.
The term “ObamaCare” was actually coined by Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign staff, as a way to differentiate “ClintonCare” or “HilliaryCare” (Bill Clinton’s proposed health care reform) from what Obama was proposing for health care.
After Obama’s election, and as he pushed for a health care reform bill, his opponents started to use the term “ObamaCare” in a negative way. News outlets that try to maintain journalistic integrity and remain neutral referred to the plan as “health care reform,” or “Affordable Care Act.” News outlets that have no qualms about propaganda (i.e. Fox News) called it “ObamaCare.” Be that as it may, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act is now the law of the land.
Since its passage, more news outlets have taken to calling it “ObamaCare.” It will be interesting in the future, after the plan is fully in effect and people depend on it and like certain parts of it, if the Conservatives will regret popularizing the term, since it will indelibly identify the plan with a Democratic president.