posted on February 10, 2014
Fact-Checker: 'Four Pinocchios' for Latest WH Obamacare Claim
http://cdn.bighealthreport.com/wp-co...11-220x120.jpg
Democrats are picking up where they left off in 2013, lying to the public about Obamacare. The president says his signature program has signed up more than nine million Americans so far through the state exchanges and Medicaid expansion. He’s made this claim on numerous occasions, including last month’s State of the Union address, and during his Super Bowl Sunday conversation with Bill O’Reilly. We’ve noted that the president’s math doesn’t add up; his exchange enrollment figures don’t factor in a substantial subset of non-payments, which experts estimate to be in the vicinity of 600,000. An Obamacare official admitted in recent Congressional testimony that the administration does not have a good handle on those numbers because much of Healthcare.gov’s back end is still under construction. Beyond that, only a small fraction of “new” enrollees were previously uninsured — not to mention the administration’s expansive definition of what qualifies as an enrollment. As for the Medicaid expansion, Sean Trende noticed that roughly half of the new (supposedly Obamacare-caused) sign-ups have occurred in states that….didn’t expand Medicaid under Obamacare. An independent study has concluded that less than one-third of new Medicaid sign-ups are a result of the ‘Affordable’ Care Act. The Washington Post’s fact-checker dings Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL) with ‘four pinnochios‘ for repeating the White House line:
Even if one took the high end of these estimates, the most one could claim is that about 4 million people have gained insurance because the Affordable Care Act, but that’s being extraordinarily generous. In the meantime, given the fuzzy nature of the numbers and the wide publicity devoted to the recent surveys, Durbin has little excuse for going on national television and claiming that every one of these people had been previously [un]insured. This has now become a Four Pinocchio violation.
Post Continues on townhall.com
Are we all impressed yet????