Sean Trende took a first look at the Administration’s expanded Medicaid enrollment figures last week and wondered if they were BS. This week he’s pretty sure:
I haven’t really seen much discussion about the Medicaid figures. The 4 million new beneficiaries seems to be taking on near-canonical status, even being used by the fact checkers at the Washington Post for evaluating GOP claims.
This is odd, because after looking carefully at the numbers cited, the Medicaid figures are the weakest of the bunch. It’s a virtual certainty that the number of enrollments attributable to Obamacare is an order of magnitude less than the 4 million sign-ups implied, and the number of people [on Medicaid] who would actually lose their insurance if Obamacare were repealed is probably around 200,000 to 300,000.
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The statistics tell us how many people signed up for Medicaid, period, in October and November. The problem is that people are always signing up for Medicaid. Even without the ACA, we would have had people signing up in October and November. Lots of them, in fact: Medicaid is a program that services 60 million citizens, so the number of monthly enrollments that keep a relatively stable population is pretty substantial.
Medicaid has a built-in churn rate, as people sign up for the program when they need it, and drop out when they no longer do. What Trende points out is that the White House is claiming that virtually 100% of the natural churn numbers for late last year are brand-new enrollees due to ♡bamaCare!!!.
I would add that when your big bragging right is that you’ve greatly expanded the dole, then you’re doing it wrong.
The fact that Professor Wiggleroom & Co. are probably lying by an order of magnitude takes their Big Wrongheaded Brag and turns it into farce.
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