If the Supreme Court rules the health reform law or its central feature—the individual mandate requiring people to have health insurance—is unconstitutional, much of the public won’t shed a tear. The Affordable Care Act remains about as unpopular as it was two years ago when the president signed it into law. In April 2010, one month after passage, 46 percent liked the new law while 40 percent did not. Kaiser Family Foundation’s latest tracking poll shows that in May only 37 percent of the public had a favorable view of the law; 44 percent viewed it unfavorably. Over the months in between those numbers have seesawed back and forth, with neither supporters nor opponents able to claim a clear majority.

What is not measured in those pro and con numbers, though, is how poorly the law is understood. As the Affordable Care Act continued its long bloody march through the legislative process, then-Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi declared, “We have to pass the bill so that you can find out what is in it, away from the fog of the controversy”—an admission from the get-go that the American public knew little about a bill that was about to land on the president’s desk and in whose name it was passed. The controversy over it continues, yet large numbers of people—even those who might benefit from it—still know little about health reform. In Omaha a few weeks ago, for one of my CJR Town Halls, I talked to Heather Brown, a 38-year-old nurse who has no insurance, can’t afford to buy it, and, under Obamacare, would probably qualify for subsidies to help defray the premium. What did she know about the law? “Very little,” she admitted. “There’s just so much crap being spoken from both sides, it’s hard to know what’s the truth. You just stop listening.”

And in March, Kaiser’s tracking poll also found that familiarity with the law’s provisions “erodes as time passes.” Kaiser found that the proportion of Americans who are familiar with the provisions in the health reform law has dropped in the months following its passage. For example, in April 2010, 75 percent recognized that the law provided for subsidies to help people buy insurance. In March 2012 only 56 percent did.

Why is the law so poorly understood?

The Republican strategy to demagogue the Affordable Care Act has certainly taken its toll on clarity. As the Pew Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism showed in a study released this week, the enemies of the Act are winning the communications war. And they seem to have the help of the media.

Pew’s research found that coverage of the health reform law “largely disappeared” as a news subject as it wound its way to the Supreme Court after passage.

When it was a major story, however, most of the coverage focused on the politics of the bill rather than the substance of the legislation. And the language and framing of the issue favored by the bill’s Republican critics was far more prevalent in the news coverage than the language and framing favored by Democrats supporting the bill.
Still, ferocious messaging by the Act’s political enemies is just part of the story. The president and his allies have been doing a poor job of explaining it. A few weeks ago New York Times columnist Tom Friedman wrote:
Barack Obama is a great orator, but he is the worst president I’ve ever seen when it comes to explaining his achievements, putting them in context, connecting with people on a gut level through repetition and thereby defining how the public views an issue.

Not only the president, but other Democrats and the advocacy coalition that helped shepherd the bill through Congress have not been not talking about the heart of the Affordable Care Act—the individual mandate—and how it operates, and why they think it is necessary for health reform to work.