Even The Dictator's Allies Are Questioning His Outright Boasts--Most Of Us Would Call Them Lies!

Obama’s False ‘7 Million’ Obamacare Claim Earns Dubious Four Pinocchios From WaPo

February 24, 2014 by Ben Bullard 

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President Barack Obama told an assemblage of Democratic governors last week that, thanks to Obamacare’s mandatory Medicaid expansion in States that match the Federal government’s health care subsidy, “We’ve got close to seven million Americans who have access to health care for the first time.”

It’s nowhere close to being true. Even Obama Administration apologist The Washington Postcouldn’t find a grain of truth in the statement.

The newspaper’s Fact Checker feature targeted the President’s boast today, noting that debunking the Administration’s frequent lies about Obamacare’s success “is like playing whack-a-mole. Every time we rap someone for getting it wrong, the same problem pops up someplace else. But here is the ultimate authority — the president of the United States — making the problematic claim that everyone counted under the administration’s Medicaid math is getting ‘access to health care for the first time.’”

What is true is that there’s no way to know right now how many people have access to health care “for the first time” because of the Medicaid expansion – but it’s certainly lower than 7 million. That’s because Obama included in his boast new Medicaid enrollees not only from the Medicaid-expanding Obamacare States, but also in the 21 States that have rejected the plan. Whoever enrolled in Medicaid in States like Florida and Texas would have enrolled in it anyway since last October. Obamacare simply doesn’t have any effect on Medicaid eligibility in States that aren’t participating in Obamacare.

Of those enrollees who do live in States that embraced Obamacare, many of the claimed 7 million were already on Medicaid last year – they just renewed their coverage and got counted in Obama’s imaginary 7 million figure. Obama likely used an even less rigid standard: the CBO’s estimate of people who were simply eligible for continued Medicaid coverage in 2014.

The Post’s various sources peg the tally of people who are getting (free) insurance for the first time because of Obamacare somewhere between 1.1 million and 2.6 million.

“In any case, no matter how you slice it, it does not add up to 7 million,” the Fact Checker states. “It is dismaying that given all of the attention to this issue, the president apparently does not realize that the administration’s data are woefully inadequate for boastful assertions of this type.”

What a great observation: the President doesn’t realize that his data is too transparently false to be useful as a bolster for his own lies. And for that – and not for actually lying – does thePost question his judgment.