MORE BS FROM BHO: White House Caught in Another Whopping ObamaCare Lie, This Time About Enrollments

Video from FoxNation.com

By: Sean Trende (RealClearPolitics)

The White House has propagated numbers regarding sign-ups for the Affordable Care Act, claiming that the program is responsible for 4 million people gaining coverage through Medicaid expansion; 3 million enrollees in their early 20s who remain on their parents’ policies; and 2 million who have purchased insurance through the exchanges.

This claim has significant ramifications, both in terms of policy and politics. If 9 million people really are new beneficiaries of Obamacare at this point, then there is a decent chance that the GOP’s “repeal” mantra will be a net negative by the fall.

All of these numbers have issues. Objections to the latter two — as well as the rejoinders to these objections — have been discussed extensively, and I will not rehash them here. Suffice it to say that at least some of these people had insurance before the ACA went into effect, and would obtain insurance if the ACA were repealed.

But I haven’t really seen much discussion about the Medicaid figures. The 4 million new beneficiaries seems to be taking on near-canonical status, even being used by the fact checkers at the Washington Post for evaluating GOP claims.

This is odd, because after looking carefully at the numbers cited, the Medicaid figures are the weakest of the bunch. It’s a virtual certainty that the number of enrollments attributable to Obamacare is an order of magnitude less than the 4 million sign-ups implied, and the number of people [on Medicaid] who would actually lose their insurance if Obamacare were repealed is probably around 200,000 to 300,000.

Read more: RealClearPolitics.com