Are Contortions Covered Under Obamacare?

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Editorial: Are contortions covered by Obamacare?

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Mark Twain famously wrote, “There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies and statistics.”

We were reminded of that witticism when Sen. Richard Durbin, the Illinois Democrat, on Sunday wildly claimed that the Affordable Care Act had pared the ranks of the nation’s uninsured by roughly a fifth.

“The bottom line is this,” said the Senate’s second-ranked Democrat, in an appearance on CBS’ “Face the Nation,” some “10 million Americans have health insurance today who would not have had it without the Affordable Care Act. Ten million.”

But that statement was just so much disinformation, as Glen Kessler blogged this week for the Washington Post.

Mr. Kessler determined that Sen. Durbin combined two figures released by the Obama administration: the 3 million to 4 million Americans who reportedly signed up for health insurance through eitherhealthcare.gov or a state exchange like Covered California, and the 6.3 million Americans deemed eligible for Medicaid

There are “big problems with both numbers,” wrote Mr. Kessler.

Healthcare.gov counted the 3 million to 4 million people as insured if they merely selected a plan, but the site had no way of knowing if those people actually enrolled in the plans they signed up for and paid a premium.

Also, while the Affordable Care Act expanded Medicaid eligibility, no one really knows how many of the 6.3 million Medicaid enrollees are in that expansion pool.

Some might have simply renewed their Medicaid. Others might have qualified for the federal entitlement without Obamacare, like the 66.4 million Americans enrolled in Medicaid in 2010, long before the president’s health care law took effect.

Mr. Kessler concluded that “the most one could claim is that about 4 million people have gained insurance because of the Affordable Care Act, but that’s being extraordinarily generous.” He added that Sen. Durbin “has little excuse for going on national television and claiming that every one of these people had been previously uninsured.”

Sen. Durbin’s remarks appear to be part of a campaign by the Obama White House and its Democratic allies on Capitol Hill. The aim is to change the view of most Americans that Obamacare is a Big Fail.

So the White House has given Sen. Durbin and other putative influencers talking points and statistics to make the case that, notwithstanding its disastrous rollout, the first four months of Obamacare were an overall success. And that Obamacare will prove even more successful as time goes by.

That’s why Sen. Durbin continues to stand by the suspect statistics he promulgated on “Face the Nation” on Sunday.

Indeed, in a statement circulated by his spokesman, Sen. Durban insisted, “Fact check after fact check has confirmed that more than 9 million Americans have signed up for private health insurance or Medicaid coverage through [the] Affordable Care Act.”

Mr. Kessler begged to differ. That’s why the WaPo’s Fact Checker blog “awarded” President Obama’s surrogate four Pinocchios for playing so fast and so loose with the truth.

That’s far more gracious than Mark Twain would have been.