Fact 1: Millions of individuals lost their healthcare insurance as their policies were canceled for non-compliance under the new ObamaCare law.
Spin: Nobody lost their healthcare insurance as in most cases those who had their insurance policies canceled for non-ACA compliance were offered an alternative/replacement plan by their insurers and if not, they were able to purchase a comparable healthcare plan through one of the state and federal healthcare exchanges.
What Really Happened: Somewhere between 2 and 5 million healthcare insurance policies were in fact canceled for not being ACA complaint at the start of the 2014 open enrollment period, which began on October 1, 2013. It was later learned that the Obama Administration was well aware that this was going to happen and in fact you could NOT keep your healthcare plan despite the repeated promise made to the American people by their president. Lawmakers attempted to pass legislation to prevent this from happening but congress was under full democratic control at the time and the no such bill had any chance of being passed.
The spin that nobody actually lost their healthcare insurance as insurance was available to them on the exchange is a pretty sad defense by the Obama Administration and there are in fact thousands of formerly insured who have since opted out of securing healthcare insurance, many of them are now without healthcare insurance for the very first time in their lives. Some opted out due to the higher cost to secure an insurance policy while others did so purely out of principal. And we just completed the second round of cancelation as we forge our way through the 2015 open enrollment period.
Fact 2: Fewer than 4.5 million long term uninsured gained a qualified healthcare insurance plan during the first open enrollment period.
Spin: As a result of ObamaCare more than 10 million Americans now have healthcare.
What Really Happened: In an effort to help reduce the burden that the uninsured places on the national debt, affordable healthcare insurance, offered through the state and federal healthcare exchanges, was projected to add 7 million of America’s uninsured nonelderly to the rolls of the insured during the first round of enrollment. However, by the end of the inaugural ObamaCare open enrollment period enrollment ended up falling far short of its target.
To draw attention away from the fact that enrollment of the uninsured nonelderly missed its mark by more than 40% (possibly by as much as 65%), the Obama Administration, through a HHS Press Release, put up a smoke screen in the form of a study performed by Gallup-Healthway, which concluded that 10.3 million uninsured adults gained healthcare coverage during the open enrollment period. For several months now the Obama Administration has been deceptively passing off the results of this study as the number of formerly uninsured who now possess a qualified healthcare plan.
However, Gallup-Healthway qualifies their findings to include those who gained access to healthcare through the Medicaid expansion, which HHS reported to be 5.8 million at the time 2014 enrollment closed. This brings the number who purchased an actual qualified healthcare insurance plan, during the open enrollment period, to 4.5 million. This figure is not reflective of how many individuals purchase their healthcare plan through one of the state or federal healthcare exchanges however as a substantial number of individuals purchased their plans from sources outside the federal marketplace. How many individual purchased their healthcare insurance plans off exchange is uncertain however, it leaves the possible number of those who did purchase qualified healthcare plans through one of the state or federal healthcare exchanges somewhere less than 4.5 million, possibly significantly less.
Fact 3: Somewhere between 2 and 3 million young adults between the ages of 19 and 25 have been allowed to stay on their parents insurance policies.
Spin: Because of the Affordable Care Act 3.1 million young adults now have healthcare insurance!
What Really Happened: Before ObamaCare existed, most or maybe even all of the 3.1 million stated in the spin were insured. Offspring up to the age of 24, who met the insurer’s student criteria, were already permitted to stay on their parents insurance policies prior to the passage of ObamaCare. The age of 24 was the adopted cut-off age where most students had completed collage and would then transition on to the regular workforce where they would then be eligible for their own employer provided healthcare insurance. Young adults who were not students or did not have a parent’s insurance policy to piggy back on could obtain a very low cost “catastrophic” healthcare plan. These catastrophic plans were very well suited for the young and healthy.
Because of the “essential benefits” package mandated to be included in all healthcare plans, the low cost catastrophic healthcare plans would no longer be available leaving a large number of young adults without affordable healthcare insurance. As a result, a provision in the ObamaCare law was added which required insurers to allow offspring to remain on their parent’s healthcare plan regardless of student status or living arrangement. Additionally, due to the high unemployment rate of young adults, the provision in the law extended the age criteria of a young adult from 24 to 26.
These new provisions in the ObamaCare law are nothing more than band aids that places an undue cost burden on insurers. But the administration needed these provisions to stop the bleeding caused by bad policy.
Fact 4: Since 2009 there has been a historic decrease in the rise in healthcare spending.
Spin: Healthcare spending is increasing at the slowest rate in a decade as a result of ObamaCare!
What Really Happened: Nobody but defenders of the law have made the claim that the slowdown in healthcare spending is tied to ObamaCare. Others have stayed away from this claim as there is nothing to support it. Those who support this claim must ignore the fact that the slowdown began before a pen had been placed to paper in the drafting of the ObamaCare bill.
Leading economist as well as the actuaries at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services all agree that the slowdown in healthcare spending is consistent with past parallels made with economic growth. To put into layman terms, a slowdown in the economy i.e. a recession, sparks a slowdown in healthcare spending and conversely, a growth in the GDP will in turn drive healthcare spending up. Short of President Obama’s wishful thinking, there are no economic indicators to link the slowing in healthcare spending to ObamaCare.
Fact 5: Prior to the passage of ObamaCare, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) produced a report which concluded that from the 34 states that had established High-Risk Health Insurance pools, there were 4 million individuals participating in the pools. This report would be used as the basis to determine the number of individual throughout the US that would likely be denied healthcare insurance do to a high cost, high risk pre-existing health or medical condition.
Spin: Both the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and President Obama publically claimed that 1 in every 2 Americans suffers from a pre-existing condition. This claim is also published on the HHS webpage and parroted by Nancy Pelosi.
What Really Happened: Insuring those with a pre-existing health condition created an emotion based selling point for ObamaCare, one of the very few selling points that drew support from the majority of Americans on both sides of the isle. Wishing to seize on its popularity, HHS and the president himself engaged in a campaign of gross misinformation to drive the sale home. Both repeatedly stated that 1 in every 2 Americans suffer from a pre-existing condition and in doing so created the impression that the number of American’s suffering from a pre-existing condition was of epidemic proportion. The claim was in fact valid however, include such afflictions as asthma, diabetes, bad backs and other chronic diseases that rarely caused excessive premiums or the denial of healthcare coverage.
While the president led people to believe that 1 in every 2 Americans was facing higher rates and even denial of healthcare insurance, the reality was that only 2.0%, or roughly 6 million of the US population at the time, were actually afflicted with a health or medical condition serious enough to be denied coverage and of those more than 93% were already covered through an employer-based or government healthcare plan.
Once ObamaCare was passed in to law, a stop-gap provision was needed to fund insurers in the interim as they were no longer able to charge more or deny insurance to those individuals with a pre-existing condition. This led to the establishment of the Pre-Existing Condition Insurance Plan (PCIP). At this time it became clear that significantly fewer than 1 in every 2 Americans were suffering from a cost prohibitive pre-existing condition as HHS had led Americans to believe on several occasion, the proof being that of the roughly 30 million uninsured Americans at the time, HHS determined that there were likely only 375,000 of those that would take advantage of the plan. This too turned out to be another over estimation as fewer than 108,000 individuals ended up enrolling on the PCIP.
The list of spins and false claims perpetuated in an effort to then sell and now protect the rapidly failing healthcare law is long, these are just a few of the top contenders. There are still the tall tales told of lower premiums, deficit reduction, keeping your doctor, greater competition and the most laughable of them all, the growing popularity of the law.
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