On Sept. 9, President Obama provided a frightening statistic (which clearly means shut up everybody and accept that Hobson’s choice of a healthcare bill and for heaven’s sake stop looking into the details): “every day, 14,000 Americans lose their coverage.”
That same day, of course, he announced that there are now 30 million Americans without health insurance.
That qualifier “now” is important, because just a few weeks earlier, on July 22, the president had said that there were 47 million people without health insurance.
It was impressive enough to discover that 17 million Americans had gotten health insurance in a seven-week period before we found out it was the net amount. It turns out that there must be about 360,939 Americans gaining health insurance ? every day!
That figure is accurate provided (a) my math is correct [x=((47,000,000-30,000,000)/49)+14,000] and (b) the president hasn’t been pulling statistics out of thin air depending upon the message of the moment.
