The problems with Obamacare numbers...

[Marcus Aurelius]

http://www.forbes.com/sites/theapot...ring-the-uninsured-a-glass-half-empty-moment/

Hard Truth #1: The Total Number of Uninsured Has NOT Declined by 9.5 Million
The LA Times, relying heavily on as-yet-unpublished RAND Corporation survey figures, has reported a grand total of 9.5 million formerly uninsured have gained coverage.

The LA Times figure includes 2 million uninsured purportedly covered through the Exchanges, 3 million previously uninsured young adults purportedly covered under their parents’ policies and 4.5 million covered through Medicaid.

Roughly 1 Million With Cancelled Plans Remain Uninsured. The problem with the first figure is that the LA Times itself reports “Fewer than a million people who had health plans in 2013 are now uninsured because their plans were canceled for not meeting new standards set by the law, the Rand survey indicates.”[1]This means we have to subtract this ~1 million newly uninsured group from the 9.5 million to arrive at the net reduction in uninsured of 8.5 million.

The Number of Previously Uninsured Young Adults Covered by Parents Half as Large as Reported. It was announced nearly 2 years ago that 3.1 million previously uninsured young adults age 19-25 had gained coverage as a consequence of the Obamacare mandate that parental plans cover such dependent “children.” This was based on an analysis of data from the National Health Interview Survey. However, there’s two other much larger surveys that both show much smaller declines: 1.8 million according to the American Community Survey (ACS)[2] and 1.4 million using the Current Population Survey (CPS).[3]

Hard Truth #2: Performance is Well Below CBO Projections
So is 7.1 million fewer uninsured a job well done or something in need of drastic improvement? The non-partisan Congressional Budget Office has been the official “scorekeeper” for Obamacare since well before it was even passed. I see no reason not to use CBO projections of coverage as the basis for determining how well the law is doing at this juncture.

When CBO originally scored the law, analysts expected it to have reduced the number of uninsured by nearly two-fifths by 2014 alone (all estimates shown are calculated by comparing CBO’s projection of the reduction in the number of uninsured under the law to its projection of the number of uninsured in 2014 without the law).[4]
Today that figure is under 23% and it remains to be seen whether CBO will adjust its expectations even further given that the actual reduction so far this year is only 12.5%.

and the kicker...

Likely Truth #3: Had CBO Projections Been Accurate, Obamacare Never Would Have Passed
I hope I have provided a useful way of assessing where we are on expanded coverage in this first year of major coverage expansion. At the end of the day, we appear to have covered 1 in 8 uninsured, but to get to this point, we have disrupted coverage for millions, increased premiums for tens of millions more and amplified the pain even further with a blizzard of new taxes and fees that will end up cost even the lowest income families nearly $7,000 over a decade.

total.. complete... utter... clusterfvck.

Moreover, imagine a world in which on March 20, 2010 the CBO had provided an accurate projection of exactly how the law actually would play out:

• 12.5% fewer uninsured by 2014 rather than 37.3%
• millions with cancelled coverage, of which 1 million remain uninsured
• a $2 trillion increase in the federal debt in its first two decades rather than a deficit reduction
• far higher premium increases in the non-group, small group and large group markets than originally estimated
• Nearly $7,000 in added taxes/fees over a decade even for families in the lowest 20% of household income

You get the idea. Armed with accurate information about its actual effects, what member of Congress would have voted for this lemon law?

 

[Marcus Aurelius]

Hard to rebut facts, huh. Thought so.