Independent Study Finds That Every Republican Prediction About Obamacare Was Wrong

Last updated on April 9th, 2018 at 09:39 am

It’s like Republicans are cursed by facts these days.

Just days after House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) went on Meet the Press to fearmonger about Obamacare, yet another study came along to sock it to his desperate Obamacare claims. An independent health policy research program study released Wednesday showed all of his predictions about Obamacare were wrong. Way wrong. Wrong on every single fearmongering prediction and claim they made.

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Under Obamacare, nearly 17 million have gotten insurance coverage since the fall of 2013. Seventeen MILLION.

The Rand analysis of their study revealed the facts:

Insurance coverage has increased across all types of insurance since the major provisions of the federal Affordable Care Act took effect, with a total of 16.9 million people becoming newly enrolled through February 2015, according to a new RAND Corporation study.

Researchers estimate that from September 2013 to February 2015, 22.8 million Americans became newly insured and 5.9 million lost coverage, for a net of 16.9 million newly insured Americans.

Republicans are running on taking that insurance away?

Republicans like to claim that it’s all Medicaid expansion. Survey says, wrong again.

Among those newly gaining coverage, 9.6 million people enrolled in employer-sponsored health plans, followed by Medicaid (6.5 million), the individual marketplaces (4.1 million), nonmarketplace individual plans (1.2 million) and other insurance sources (1.5 million).

And remember how Republicans sounded the hysteria alarms that Obama was ruining their insurance and nobody would get to keep their insurance?

The study also estimates that 125.2 million Americans — about 80 percent of the nonelderly population that had insurance in September 2013 — experienced no change in the source of insurance during the period, according to findings published online by the journal Health Affairs.

Republicans said Obamacare would cause private employers to stop offering insurance. Survey says, wrong again:

RAND researchers say the findings that the biggest gain in coverage was from employer-sponsored insurance runs counter to predictions that many employers may quit offering insurance in response to the Affordable Care Act and suggests that regardless of whether that occurs, employer-sponsored coverage will remain the nation’s major source of health insurance coverage.

On Sunday, this happened:

Chuck Todd confronted Boehner about his wrong Obamacare predictions that fewer people would have health care under the ACA and that Obamacare would kill jobs.

Boehner replied, “Obamacare made it harder for employers to hire people. The economy expands and as a result you’re going to have more employees because businesses have to. But you can ask any employer in America and ask them if Obamacare has made it harder to hire employees because it’s a fact. Um, yeah. Do you know why there’re more people insured? Because a lot more people are on Medicaid, and you know giving people Medicaid insurance is almost like giving them nothing. Because there aren’t, you can’t find a doctor that will see Medicaid patients, and so where do they end up? In the same place, they used to end up, in the emergency room.”

We already debunked the Speaker’s first point about Obamacare killing jobs. This is not happening. The only people killing jobs are Republicans, due to the sequester and their refusal to pass any jobs legislation.

A poll by the National Association of Business Economics (NABE) that surveyed four sectors of the economy found that seventy-five percent of business owners said that the ACA has not impacted their hiring practices. An additional 85% said that they didn’t expect the ACA to impact their hiring practices in the future.

In fact, President Obama has set a record for the longest stretch of private sector job growth of any modern president. So much nope. The public sector is suffering job losses due to the Republican sequester but also due to state Republicans slashing funds.

None of the predictions and claims Republicans — and indeed our media — ran with for years have come true. A “glitch” did not stop 17 million people from getting coverage.

The air leaking out of the GOP’s ACA lies balloon, and the Republican Party is in for a rough landing if they continue to insist on repealing Obamacare.

Sarah Jones

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Sarah has been credentialed to cover President Barack Obama, then VP Joe Biden, 2016 Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, and exclusively interviewed Speaker Nancy Pelosi multiple times and exclusively covered her first home appearance after the first impeachment of then President Donald Trump.

Sarah is two-time Telly award winning video producer and a member of the Society of Professional Journalists.

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