In an article about Trump Administration consideration of gas mileage rules, "The Atlantic," Robinson Meyer pokes fun at the Trump Administration, "The Trump Administration Flunked Its Math Homework," trying to perpetuate one of the three basic Democrat claims against Trump, (racist, 'unfit' and stupid characteristics, also expanded by Democrats to describe anyone who disagrees with them--and, by the way, way to not win votes Democrats).
Much to our detriment, such math scholars were absent when it came to Obamacare and we're all living with that sloppy, overreaching piece of political egotism from President Obama. So when it comes to math, let's take a good look at a few math challenges of Obamacare.
How many were uninsured? First we were told there were 49 million (see Reuters, 10/19/2016, "Obama says his departure may fix what ails Obamacare," where Roberta Rampton cites Obama's untruthful assertion that the problems with Obamacare are because people didn't like him, sad face.) 47 million was also tossed around.
But as Obamacare enrollment's anemic performance LOWERED the success rate of tackling those numbers, after all, at its best with all its draconian efforts it never did achieve the enrollment predicted, what was the Administration to do? 11 million (a generous guesstimate of enrollment for an Obamacare given year) is a paltry 23 percent of 47 million and 22 percent of 49 million. The CBO informed us in March of 2015, “…[S]lightly lower estimate of the number of people who will gain insurance coverage because of the ACA,” (CBO, Pub. 49973, page 19).
Uh-oh. So much for math. Two ways to look at that, either fewer people were uninsured to begin with making use of exchanges less relevant or the ACA didn't thoroughly address the REASONS people were uninsured. Both are probably true.
How many people were eligible for expanded Medicaid? Supporting the obvious failure of the ACA to reduce the costs of obtaining health insurance in a meaningful way (as promised in the false math promise of $2,500 savings per year for families from President Obama), the Congressional Budget Office also stated:
“…that the estimated proportion of Medicaid enrollees who were newly eligible under the ACA was larger than expected,” (CBO, Pub. 49892, page 11) which meant that “For 2015 and beyond, the agencies currently expect that roughly 70 percent of the people who will receive Medicaid coverage because of the ACA will be newly eligible for the program” (CBO, Pub. 49892, page 13) and “Federal costs per Medicaid enrollee are much higher for those who are newly eligible than for those who were previously eligible because the federal government pays a larger share of the costs for newly eligible enrollees (CBO, Pub. 49892, page 14).
Whoops, that wouldn't look good for Democrats ballooning government spending on Medicaid, so back to the CBO in March and the same strategy for different purpose, with the CBO stating, "“Because Medicaid enrollment before the coverage expansion under the ACA turned out to be higher than CBO and JCT anticipated, the pool of people who would have been eligible for Medicaid but not enrolled in the program before the ACA expansion is now estimated to be smaller…and thus a somewhat smaller number of people are projected to enroll in Medicaid because of the ACA,” (CBO, Pub. 49973, page 22).
This time the math changes claimed that many of the new enrollees were not new enrollees at all, they were already eligible under original Medicaid, which would calm the nerves of those worrying about ballooning Medicaid payments.
Obama Administration Goes to Court to PAY MORE PEOPLE PREMIUM ASSISTANCE: Then there was the claimed TYPO in Obamacare that required eligibility for federal government premium payments which in Obamacare were clearly stated to be available to "residents of an establishing or participating state," (which meant with incomplete adoption of Obamacare that many states' residents would NOT receive premium payments), and the government actually won the Supreme Court TYPO case of King v. Burwell, where the Administration fought to pay MORE people premium assistance fearful that the Obamacare exchange program was going under without such payouts.
Then there was the new math of the "savings," of Obamacare that ignored the infrastructure and public employee salaries and benefits of implementing the program, the government costs for government, where Obama's Administration and the CBO in 2015 simply informed “…estimates address only the insurance coverage provisions of the ACA and do not reflect all of the act’s budgetary effects…The incremental budgetary effects of those noncoverage provisions…cannot all be separately identified using the agency’s normal procedures. As a result, CBO does not produce estimates of the budgetary effects of the ACA." That's right, they wouldn't do the math at all so those costs would be ignored.
The costs to consumers was another great math moment as Democrats untruthfully bragged about savings from Obamacare, untruthfully because we KNOW that government costs of the program aren't calculated and because the Congressional Budget Office("Private Health Insurance Premiums and Federal Policy," ALSO informed us that OUR consumer costs had "Over the period from 2005 to 2014, premiums for employment-based insurance grew by 48 percent for single coverage and by 55 percent for family coverage. CBO and JCT expect them to grow at similar rates over the next decade."
EXPECT THEM TO GROW AT SIMILAR RATES OVER THE NEXT DECADE--not exactly an Obama government CBO judgment that mirrored what we were told.
So yea Democrats for catching typos and checking Republican math, but the question persists, "Where were you when consumers needed you?"
