Many thanks to the always-excellent reporting from Rachel Maddow for this news bit
Bereft of any actual ideas on health care, Republicans have fallen back on several conflicting talking points: "Obamacare" is either covering too many people or not covering enough; they can't seem to decide.
Now it appears that those suffering from Obamacare Derangement Syndrome have a new talking point they're eager for the media to pick up: the ACA enrollment numbers don't actually count, because "only 67%" of enrollees have paid their premium. That comes from this news item from The Hill.
Unfortunately, like most (if not all) of the GOP lines on health reform, this one is highly misleading, if not outright untrue.
As Rachel Maddow reported on her blog today, these numbers are at odds with figures from health care companies themselves, which point to 80-90% of enrollees paying their premiums. We know that insurance companies have no reason to 'cook the books' when it comes to enrollment numbers (unlike the GOP), so their figures are infinitely more believable that those issued by partisans trying to make a political point.
Setting that aside, however, Republicans chose April 15th as the cut-off date for their figures. What's the problem with that? The fact that many enrollees didn't receive a bill until April 15th, since they enrolled by the March 31st deadline. One can hardly expect someone to pony up the money to pay their first premium on the same day they received their bill.
Charles Gaba explains this in not-quite-as-polite terms here.
Even more damning is the fact that Republicans were warned that the numbers were misleading - they just didn't seem to care (source).
So, at the end of the day, we have a highly misleading statistic that Republicans can use to...what? Convince the American populace to shy away from signing up for Obamacare, thus putting them at risk due to lack of health insurance?
Do Republicans even have a conscience anymore, or is everything just politics to them?
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