Debby Yetter's "More Kentuckians getting insurance under ACA" uses numbers that contradict her paper's headline and underscore the value of seeking alternative viewpoints to balance journalistic writing.
Yetter claims 9.8% of Kentuckians remain uninsured and "nearly 400,000" were added to Medicaid under its expansion. According to U.S. Census Bureau statistics, that means 432,518 Kentuckians remain uninsured, even though doing so is against the law. Before ObamaCare, Gov. Beshear claimed repeatedly there were 640,000 uninsured Kentuckians and his own Department of Insurance confirmed 280,000 Kentuckians were forced out of their insurance policies and "transitioned" to new plans at double the cost.
So even if you assume all 280,000 "if you like it, you can keep it" victims got insurance for what it would have previously cost to insure 560,000 of us -- they didn't -- then by their own numbers we have gone through this whole mess of higher taxes, much higher insurance premiums and substantial illegal activity by elected officials just to force 207,482 more Kentuckians into absurdly expensive "health insurance" for which we could have insured 400,000 without ObamaCare.
The numbers simply don't add up to a success for anyone other than politicians hoping no one looks beyond the spin.
"These numbers make clear the biggest unanswered question in ObamaCare is shouldn't we remove ObamaCare from insurance and just buy policies for the poorest people since we know we could do that much cheaper," said Kentucky Progress publisher David Adams. "Every day with these people makes the case for getting government out of healthcare that much stronger."
