During a recent discussion of the Affordable Care Act, GOP propaganda regarding the US uninsured rate, former Sen. Judd Gregg (R-N.H.) insisted, “It has not plummeted.” Basically, Gregg stated his belief the ACA has not reduced the number of people covered by some for of medical insurance coverage. A remark that is so far outside of accurate it cannot even be considered a lie.
Data and visual representation of data are the most effective way to deal with people who obviously get all of their news from Breitbart dot com, The Baze, The Daily Caller and various AM Talk radio stations. Let’s view a few graphs that place Greggs rhetoric in perspective.
http://whatifpost.com/the-u-s-uninsured-rate-continues-to-drop.htm
To put Obamacare’s reduction of the uninsurance rate into perspective, let’s compare it to something a bit more recent. There was a huge outcry over people losing their plans as a result of the new law, but a study from the Urban Institute found that the total was fewer than a million policies were actually canceled. Meanwhile, that 6% point reduction in the uninsurance rate since the passage of Obamacare means that at least 16.4 million people without insurance now have coverage- an amount that is expected to double over the next few years.
Cary Fiorina continued her bizarre utterances regarding the ACA (and other issues) with typical Fiorina non-sense.
RH Reality Check dot org
Excerpt
Prior to Tuesday’s debate, the ACA has received surprisingly little attention during the primary debate season. During Fox News’ first Republican debate, the topic didn’t rank among the most prominent issues discussed, and even Democratic debates and forums have largely skipped over it.
This means the public isn’t getting answers from candidates about their views on health care. “The result … is that the public is not learning much from these widely viewed events about what candidates would do regarding one of the country’s most divisive issues should he or she be elected president,” Kaiser Family Foundation President Drew Altman explained in an analysis for the Wall Street Journal.
On Tuesday, Fox News debate moderator Maria Bartiromo finally pushed a candidate to talk about the ACA: Carly Fiorina. When Bartiromo asked Fiorina whether she supported the health-care law’s employer mandate, which requires companies with more than 50 employees to provide health insurance, the candidate launched into a speech blasting the ACA for failing to truly help anyone, claiming that it needed to be rolled back because “it’s failing the very people it is intending to help.”
Fiorina’s assertion that the health-care law has failed to help Americans is a stretch, if not an outright falsehood. According to Gallup polling, the ACA has resulted in a dramatic 5.5 percent decline in the rate of uninsured persons in the United States. In 2014 alone, the ACA enabled more than ten million people to gain access to affordable health-care coverage. Recently released data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that this trend has continued into 2015, with 7.5 million fewer Americans than the year before finding themselves uninsured in the first six months of the year.
“Just to be clear, you want to repeal Obamacare … but, what’s the alternative?” Bartiromo pressed after Fiorina’s answer.
Fiorina’s response was again composed of more fiction than anything else. “The alternative is to allow states to manage high-risk pools for those who really need help. Look, I’m a cancer survivor, OK? I understand that you cannot have someone who’s battled cancer just become known as a preexisting condition. I understand that you cannot allow families to go bankrupt if they truly need help. But, I also understand that Obamacare isn’t helping anyone,” said Fiorina.
The high-risk pools Fiorina outlined as part of an ACA replacement strategy refer to state-sponsored health plans for those unable to obtain insurance in the private market due to preexisting conditions. According to an analysis by the Center for American Progress, these plans do not provide a good alternative for those with preexisting conditions, as research based on the 35 states in which such programs previously existed found that the coverage they provided was expensive and created “a greater burden on individuals with expensive medical conditions who have already spent large amounts of their income on health care.”
Spewing re-establish rhetoric may work well with a Fox News debate panel and conservative audience, but Fiorina flop once e fact-checkers and analyzers go to work after the debate.
House Speaker John Boehner
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell
The Pardu's Scroll 