John Merline of Investor’s Business Daily dissects President Obama’s recent comments about his signature health reform law.
At his year-ending press conference, President Obama praised the success of ObamaCare, saying that 17 million gained coverage, that the uninsured rate was in the single digits for the first time ever and that health care inflation is at historic lows.
Was any of that true?
It depends on your source. That 17 million figure comes from a study by the RAND Corporation, which said that by February of this year, 17 million more had coverage than in late 2013.
But Obama’s own number crunchers at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services put the figure far lower than that.
According to the CMS, 8.7 million — or less than half of the RAND number — gained coverage by the end of 2014. The Census Bureau puts the number at 8.8 million. …
… What about the uninsured rate being in the “single digits”? That comes from the Centers for Disease Control’s “early release” of estimates from its health interview survey. From January through June, 9% said that they were uninsured at the time of the interview.
But that’s just one measure of the uninsured.
The CDC also asked if they’ve been uninsured at any time during the past year, which presumably is a more accurate gauge than a snapshot in time. By that measure, the uninsured rate is 13.5%. …
… What about health inflation? Here Obama is on very tenuous grounds.
CMS data show that the annual growth rate for national health spending had been trending down for years before Obama took office and well before ObamaCare took effect.
It also shows that last year — the first year the ObamaCare exchanges were in operation and the Medicaid expansion took effect — that downward trend suddenly reversed. Health spending climbed 5.3% in 2014, compared with 2.9% in 2013.