Obamacare Truthers Lose Another One
Obamacare Truthers Get Caught in a Lie on Delinquency Rate
One way to make Obamacare look bad: Count as unpaid the new enrollees whose premiums arent even due yet!
Michael Tomasky
First, the Obamacare Truthersthe Republicans and conservatives who insist that every piece of remotely positive news about the health-care laws impact has to be a filthy lielost the battle of the enrollment figures. The issue here isnt whether the Obama administration is telling the complete truth when it says 8 million. The issue is that the Truthers predicted 3 million, 2 million, 1 million, 0 million, a death spiral. And whether the administration is gilding the lily and the real number is 8 or 7.7 or 7.4 million, the hard fact is the Truthers were just crazy wrong.
Having lost that battle, theyve now opened fire on a second front. Maybe the enrollment numbers are wrong, maybe theyre right, the Truthers say, but that doesnt matter. What matters is the percentage of people who actually pay their premiums.
There is some truth (as opposed to Truth) to this. People can sign up with every intention of paying and then get hit with somethingan unexpected car-repair billand they cant pay. Or more likely, theyre young and healthy, and they decide What was I thinking, I got all caught up in Zach Galifianakis fever?and they dont pay. And if the young and healthy (who cost the insurance companies nothing) dont pay, then the only people in the system are the old and sick, who cost the insurance companies a lot, and premiums skyrocket.
So in some ways the percentage paying number is even more important than the raw enrollment number. It is, after all, the real enrollment number, the number of people actually getting and keeping health coverage. And so the second the Truthers lost the enrollment fight, they moved to the percentage battle. This will prove that Obamacare cant work.
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http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/05/02/obamacare-truthers-get-caught-in-a-lie-on-delinquency-rate.html