Obama campaigning on health law while Romney backs away from the issue

President Obama is focusing on the health care law in his campaign stops, touting its consumer benefits. Democrats -- in their own campaigning -- are embracing the GOP-coined term "Obamacare."

The Associated Press: Obama Embraces Health Care Law After Court Ruling
President Barack Obama, emboldened by the Supreme Court's affirmation of his health care overhaul, is now embracing the law while campaigning for re-election, just as Republican rival Mitt Romney steps back from it. Obama sees a second chance to sell voters on the issue despite deep skepticism about it from many people. Romney is avoiding answering hard questions about how he would tackle health care, and thus missing the chance to energize voters who oppose the law. Democrats say the president always planned to stress health care if the court upheld the law. A month after the ruling, he and his team are focused on promoting individual parts of the law that have proved more popular than the sum. The campaign is targeting its efforts on important groups of voters, including women and Hispanics, who, Obama aides say, will benefit greatly once the law takes full effect (Pace, 8/6).

The New York Times: Democrats Embrace Once Pejorative 'Obamacare' Tag
As thousands of people gathered on a sweltering night outside a local high school draped with flags and bunting, the speaker talked about the president's controversial health program. "That's why he passed Obamacare!" she declared. There it was, the derogatory term critics invented for President Obama's health law, more properly known as the Affordable Care Act of 2010. Republicans long ago successfully pasted the president's name on the program to deride it as a big-government boondoggle. But now an unlikely group has adopted the moniker: Democrats (Baker, 8/3).

In the meantime, new ads from Romney and Obama focus on women's health and the candidates' positions on Planned Parenthood -

CBS (Video): New Obama, Romney Ads Focus On Women, Jobs
Coming four days after the mandate requiring health insurance companies to provide free contraception coverage went into effect, this ad from the Obama campaign features women expressing their doubts that presumptive GOP nominee Romney "can even understand the mindset of someone who has to go to Planned Parenthood." Romney, as shown in the ad, has steadfastly maintained his desire to cut off government funding to the reproductive health resource center (Boerma, 8/5).

Politico: New Obama Ad Hits Romney On Planned Parenthood
President Obama's reelection campaign is up with a new ad that attacks Mitt Romney on the issue of contraception and the GOP nominee's repeated vows to defund the women's health group Planned Parenthood. ... Romney spokesperson Andrea Saul responds to the ad, saying, "One day after the unemployment rate increased and we reached 42 consecutive months with a jobless rate greater than eight percent, it is not surprising that the Obama campaign would release a false ad in an attempt to distract from the effects of the President's failed policies (Tau, 8/4).


http://www.kaiserhealthnews.orgThis article was reprinted from kaiserhealthnews.org with permission from the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation. Kaiser Health News, an editorially independent news service, is a program of the Kaiser Family Foundation, a nonpartisan health care policy research organization unaffiliated with Kaiser Permanente.

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