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This summer was supposed to be a time to reintroduce the public to the Affordable Care Act and teach people how to sign up for benefits this fall.

But that's not what's happening.

Instead, earlier this month, the Obama administration decided to delay some key pieces of the law, most notably the requirement for larger employers to provide coverage or risk fines, because they couldn't have reporting regulations ready in time for next year's rollout.

Then this week, the Republican-led House voted to delay the so-called individual mandate for a year to match. It was the 39th such vote against the law.

And now some are starting to worry that the White House is getting dangerously off-message.

The administration tried to regroup Thursday: It put President Obama front and center in the White House East Room, surrounded by smiling beneficiaries of the parts of the Affordable Care Act already in effect.

Among those singled out: those who have been on the receiving end of a somewhat obscure provision requiring insurance companies to pay rebates to policyholders if the companies spend too much on administrative costs rather than medical expenses.

"Dan Hart, who's here, from Chicago, had read these rebates were happening," said Obama. "But he didn't think anything of it until he got a check in the mail for 136 bucks."

This year an estimated 8.5 million Americans will get rebates thanks to the law's "medical loss ratio" rules. That's actually down from the 13 million who got them last year. And Obama admitted that even those who are getting the checks don't necessarily associate them with the health law.

"I bet if you took a poll, most folks wouldn't know when that check comes in that this was because of Obamacare that they got this extra money in their pockets," he said.

Which is a big part of the administration's messaging problem. According to public opinion polls, many of the law's provisions are extremely popular. But the law itself isn't. Still.

And while the president is talking about a few million people getting refunds of $100 or $200, Republicans have been talking in much more expansive terms.

"A government-run health care system is at its very basis a beginning of socialism in medicine and we oppose that," said Rep. Pete Sessions, R-Texas, during the House floor debate Wednesday.

At his daily briefing Thursday, White House spokesman Jay Carney derided Republicans' continuing efforts to roll back the law.

Carney said the president is willing to make changes to the law as necessary. "But that is wholly different from this constant and now almost comical effort to spend most of the time in the House of Representatives hoping to repeal in some form or manner a bill that has been passed into law by both houses, signed into law by the president, and upheld as the law by the Supreme Court of the United States."

Still, there's a major difference in the way Republicans talk about the law and the way the president does, says George Lakoff, a professor of linguistics at the University of California-Berkeley and an expert on political messaging.

Lakoff says Republicans talk about the law as a moral issue. "Basically ... they say that democracy is about liberty, the liberty to pursue your own self-interest without you having to take care of anybody else's interests or anybody else having to take care of yours."

But when Obama talks about the health law — at least this week, says Lakoff — "his message was all about money."

And Lakoff says that's pretty much been the president's problem: He's mostly shied away from talking about health care on the same moral terms as have the Republicans.

But he could talk about it from the moral perspective of Democrats if he wanted to, Lakoff says.

"Health care is about life itself, about living a decent life, about living free from fear, and also free from economic fear. Fear of losing your home because you have to pay out of pocket for operations that really ought to be paid for by having healthcare insurance," he said.

The administration, however, has seemed to be all over the place when it comes to its messaging about the health law.

Of course it's been a lot easier for the Republicans. Their message is pretty much one word: No.

The Act of Killing

Director: Joshua Oppenheimer

Genre: Documentary

Running Time: 115 minutes

With: Haji Anif, Syamsul Arifin, Sakhyan Asmara

(Recommended)

Marti Olesen's favorite summer recipe is plucked straight from the garden — and the faster it gets to your plate, the better. She calls it Diane's Dad's Summer Sandwich.

"I've been eating this sandwich for 27 years and I am the epitome of health — and beauty," Olesen laughs.

Olesen is an elementary school librarian in Ponca, Ark. She first encountered the sandwich when a coworker, Diane Dickey, told her about it decades ago.

"She was reminiscing about this wonderful sandwich that she ate every summer with her dad. I was a vegetarian at the time and I thought, 'I'm game. Tell me about it,'" Olesen says.

The ingredient list starts out pretty traditionally: Tomatoes, Vidalia or red sweet onion and cucumbers, all fresh and sliced thinly. The veggies are placed between two slices of whole grain bread with white cheddar cheese. But the sandwich isn't complete until you slather on some crunchy peanut butter.

Olesen was skeptical as she headed to the farmer's market to gather the ingredients for the first time. Once assembled she took a big bite and thought, "'You know, it's okay, but I'm not loving it yet.'"

Realizing there might be a secret in the layering, she reordered the sandwich three of four different times but never loved the result.

"But I was very polite and I did not say anything to Diane," she says.

A couple of weeks went by before Dickey asked about the sandwich. Olesen played it off, conceding Dickey's love of the sandwich was probably wrapped up in her childhood memories.

Vote For Your Favorite

This recipe is among three finalists in our "Taste of Summer" contest. Take a look at the two others below and vote for your favorite by sending a message to All Things Considered here. Make sure to put "Taste Of Summer Vote" in the subject line.

Hari Kondabolu is a brainy comedian who cuts through the polite talk around race and gender. He's made a lot of key people laugh with his incisive anecdotes, including Jimmy Kimmel, Conan O'Brien and John Oliver.

A full-time writer on the FX show Totally Biased with W. Kamau Bell, he recently did a comedy bit on the National Spelling Bee, or "as I like to call it," he joked, "the Indian Super Bowl."

Kondabolu makes a fair point: For six years in a row, the winner has been Indian-American. As a result, he continued, "it gives me great pleasure to finally be able to say 'Hey white people, learn the language.' "

At first he was reluctant to write a bit about South Asians winning the spelling bee because it's kind of a clich.

"At the same time, I'm like: Let's own it," Kondabolu explains. "There's nothing embarrassing about kids doing well at school and dominating that happen to be South Asian, which is very exciting for me. And there aren't any South Asian athletes. I mean Jeremy Lin was Taiwanese-American. I took ownership of that. It's as close as we've gotten.

"But this is something we dominate at. This isn't the Indian Cricket team. These are South Asian-Americans, Indian-Americans dominating. And I loved it."

Thirteen-year-old Arvind Mahankali won this year's spelling bee. During his interview after his victory, he said that he planned to spend the rest of his summer studying physics. Kondabolu jokes, "He's a two-sport athlete!"

A Time To Unite?

Kondabolu was born and raised in a diverse neighborhood in Queens, N.Y., which he describes as having "different immigration status, different income levels, different languages, different parts of the world. It was incredible."

His parents were born in India and moved to the U.S. when they were in their 20s. Kondabolu describes a time in his childhood when his mother took he and his brother to Burger King, because she wanted them to assimilate into American society.

"We never saw something strange about that," he says. "As I got older, it was kind of bizarre, like 'Wait a second, why are you, why? Why did you take us to Burger King and, if we're Hindu, how come you let us eat beef?' She said that she wanted us to get used to what it was like to be an American, and apparently Burger King, well, it's fast food. What's more American than fast food?"

His mother, Uma Kondabolu, laughs as she says that, yes, she did take her sons to Burger King because it is very American but also where they found people of all backgrounds.

"That's where they played with other kids of all colors," she says. "And then I used to meet with other parents of all colors."

Uma wanted her kids to see that interacting with people of all colors was not "bad" or "scary." And Hari Kondabolu says that he felt safe growing up in his Queens neighborhood. He didn't think racism was a serious problem until the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11.

"You hear about the hate violence all around the country, even in New York, and I think that's what struck me the most, it was happening in New York, and it was confusing, because I grew up in Queens, I grew up in New York, and we just dealt with this terrorism, we dealt with 9/11," says Kondabolu, who was 18 when the World Trade Center attacks happened.

"And you're telling me, after this, everyone's claiming we're all coming together, we're getting closer, this is a time where we unite. It's like, really? Because, in my community, I see people getting hurt and being put into detention centers."

As a result, Kondabolu became politically active. He worked in the Queens district attorney's office bureau of hate crimes, went to Seattle to work for an immigrant rights group and got his masters in human rights at the London School of Economics.

All the while, his stand-up comedy was just a hobby. The idea of doing it full-time came when, in the early 1990s, Kondabolu saw Margaret Cho on Comedy Central.

"To see someone who wasn't black or Latino or white do stand-up was huge," Kondabulo explains. "And she was talking about immigrant parents, and I have immigrant parents — my parents are different from her parents, but she was talking about it. And that was OK, and it was funny. I was so amazed by that. I wanted to do that after watching her perform."

'A Good Laugh Over A Drink'

Today, Kondabolu's material is not so much about his own family, but about being an outsider in general — or at least being treated like one. And he's not afraid of challenging some long-standing beliefs.

"How do people justify homophobia in this country? 'Y'know, it's not Adam and Steve, it's Adam and Eve,' " he said at a recent show at the Black Cat in Washington, D.C. "Look, technically that is true. Right, it was Adam and Eve. But if you remember the story, it was Adam and Eve and a talking serpent. I feel like the talking serpent throws the whole account into question. I don't know how true this is. There's a talking snake involved. Maybe you shouldn't base your values on a Jungle Book-type scenario. What would Baloo do? What about Shere Khan? What about Winnie the Pooh? Oh, is that a different world? Does it matter at this point? That's a Jungle Book-type scenario. Look, I'm an Indian-Hindu alright. I know all about Jungle Book-type scenarios. That is a Jungle Book-type scenario."

Kondabolu says he knows some people won't like his point of view. "I've been approached after shows from people who said, 'I don't agree with anything you said, but I laughed the whole way through.' That's still a little strange to me. Like, nothing? Really? But at the same time that's what happens in a conversation. You might not agree with everything the other person is saying, but you can still have a good laugh over a drink, right?"

At the show in Washington, D.C., the audience was very diverse and didn't seem to have a problem with his point of view.

"People keep bringing up the year 2042 on the news when Census figures indicate that whites will be the minority," he joked. "In 2042, apparently white people will be 49 percent. First of all, why do we give a f—k? Why do we keep mentioning this? Why is this even an issue? Are there white people here that are concerned that they'll be the minority in 2042? Don't worry white people, you were a minority when you came to this country. Things seemed to have worked out for you."

Kondabolu also recently recorded material for his first live comedy album, being released on the record label Kill Rock Stars. Although the label is best known for punk rock, Kondabolu thinks it's a perfect fit.