Yet another fail for Boehner…
Mediaite
Last week, House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) claimed that, based on the numbered of cancelled plans versus number of enrollees, the Affordable Care Act must have resulted in a net loss of insured Americans. Though PolitiFact and Washington Post’s fact checker Glenn Kessler had plowed this territory before, both felt that the Speaker of the House making the claim meant it warranted further review.
Those reviews are in. The verdict: nope.
Both fact-checking sites questioned Boehner’s number of those who had plans cancelled because they failed to meet the ACA’s minimum standards (best estimates place that number at under 5 million, not at 6).
Both sites also reminded Boehner that many cancelled polices were extended under the ACA’s fix enacted late last fall that allowed people to keep their policies for another year, while some were moved automatically by their insurance companies to new plans. PolitiFact estimated that the number of people actually left without insurance is about 500,000. Even taking into account that a fraction of those signing up through the ACA’s website were previously uninsured, the number well exceeds those who would have actually lost insurance.
They also found Boehner’s claim failed to include people twenty-six years and younger who were able to join their parents’ health plan, and those who signed up through Medicaid; conservative estimates put those two groups combined at around 5 million.
“Taking the lowest-range estimates, we still end up with nearly 9 million people added to the insurance rolls, more than enough to swamp Boehner’s 6 million figure, which as we noted is a pretty useless number to begin with,” Kessler wrote yesterday, awarding Boehner’s claim four Pinocchios.
On Tuesday, PolitiFact weighed in and called the claim “Completely false“:
It’s bad math for two reasons. First, most of the people who lost their insurance have seen those policies extended to them through an administrative fix, or they received new coverage through their previous insurer or they bought a new plan. Second, he ignores the millions of people who bought coverage off the exchange, those who gained coverage through Medicaid and the under-26 crowd able to remain on their parents’ insurance.
We don’t yet know how many new Americans will ultimately gain coverage. But every indicator right now suggests it will be a net gain.
[h/t PolitiFact / Washington Post]
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