President Barack Obama Used the Term "Obamacare" for the First Time during Thursday's Health Care Summit
One interesting development went completely unreported during or after the festivities at the health care summit last Thursday: for the first time, President Barack Obama referred to his own signature comprehensive health care reform initiative as “Obamacare”. Obama used the term Obamacare at the very end of the health care summit in his closing remarks. Here’s the Washington Post transcript of the history-making moment when Obama uttered Obamacare for the first time:
OBAMA: An interesting thing happened a couple of weeks ago, and that is a report came out that for the first time, it turns out that more Americans are now getting their health care coverage from government than those who are getting it from the private sector. And you know what? That’s without a bill from the Democrats or from President Obama. It has nothing to do with, quote-unquote, “Obamacare.”
Some on the left have attacked centrists and conservatives for using the term Obamacare, with some left wing bloggers going so far afield as to declare that Obamacare is the “new N word.” Others on the left claim that using the term Obamacare “demonizes” Obama somehow and is a personal attack on Obama. Urban Dictionary has several interesting definitions of Obamacare, one of which focuses on the allegedly inappropriate nature of the term:
obamacare
1. n. A term invented by impoverished, dumb-ass neocons to apply negative connotation to the bi-partisan, congressional health care plan.
2. n. A term created to align this struggling bill–being impeded by billion-dollar insurance industries and represented by “the people” organized by Fox News in a “grassroots” movement–with President Barack Obama.
3. n. A term used by dumb shits who watch Glenn Beck and oppose government-run healthcare and are more likely to follow a 7th-Day Adventist ideology over SOCIALISM!!!!
As no one in the mainstream media, popular political blogs or even little tiny blogs like this one has reported on Obama’s use of the term Obamacare for the first time Thursday, many on the far left who attack anyone who use the term are probably unaware that Obama used the term himself on Thursday at the summit. The term appears in the transcripts, but in no articles of any kind on the internet.
Hopefully, this post will serve as a starting point to reporting the news that Obama actually used the term Obamacare for the first time on Thursday and perhaps avoid continued hostility and attacks by those on the far left who (wrongly) view the term Obamacare as a slur. Indeed, if Obama himself used the term Obamacare to describe his plans on health care, it makes little sense to argue that the term itself is somehow an offensive slur.