LOS ANGELES (YBH.ME) - Much-bandied figures by Democrats cover who has or does not have health care. The 45 million touted over the summer mysteriously, and without fanfare, went down to 30 million. Lately, as the Senate vote looms, many a speech urging passage mentions that 14,000 people a day lose their health insurance.
Those Losing Health Insurance Much less Than Stated
Exactly how that amazingly precise figure was reached interested PoltiFact, the popular fact-checking arm of the Pulitzer-prize winning St. Petersburg Times. The newspaper runs the feature, snooping out truths and half-truths among the political set.
The figure is based on the liberal Center for American Progress think tank’s estimate that 14,000 people a day are losing their jobs, and therefore their health insurance. The estimate is said to take into account people who may go to COBRA coverage or a spouse’s coverage.
But Politifact finds the number to be much less than that, stating:
If you take the period since Obama has been in office (and you count January 2009, even though he was only president for part of that month), the unemployment rate has risen from 7.6 percent to 10 percent.
If you estimate the data based on [the think tank's] model, that would amount to 2.6 million jobs lost over 11 months. Dividing 2.6 million by 334 days, you get 7,784 people losing insurance every day — a number very close to what we found for the recession as a whole, and, once again, only about half of what Democrats have been saying all these months.
The St. Petersburg Times is owned by the Poynter Institute for Media Studies, a non-profit affiliated with the University of South Florida Tampa Bay campus. The Poynter Institute also publishes the Congressional Quarterly.
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Laura spent years as a Hollywood story analyst, did a big 180, and is now an entrepreneur focused on web marketing and analytics. She's also a mom of one.Laura Glendinning article archive.
