I’m writing a term paper and need to know the appropriate acceptable case for “Obamacare”; preferably, I’d refer to it as “The Affordable Care Act”, but the subject of the paper warrants the nickname. I’ve seen articles referring to it as “Obamacare”, “ObamaCare”, “Obama Care” and “Obama care”.
For now, I'm going with “Obamacare”. Had there been a Legal Questions Stack Exchange, I’d have asked this there instead.
Both the Washington Post as well as The New York Times appear to consistently prefer Obamacare, which as portmanteaux go, is as it should be. Some seemingly exceptional constructions which use mixed-case—such as WikiLeaks—are often structured so due to trademark issues or simply because that is how they are typed at the source.
Yes, Obamacare is the most widely used. But ObamaCare is also used in captions on TV and in newspapers as is Obamascare.
