People like to say things that they wish were true. The fact that they aren't true, isn't their fault - it's simply a failure of imagination by those who don't want those things, who refuse to dive beneath the surface of common wisdom to dig out the un-common jewels of "deep knowledge" that only those with a clear vision of conviction can see. Or in some cases they just truly, desperately, deeply, passionately Need for certain things to be true, because if they are not true those people would look really, really, amazingly, stupendously, fracking stupid.
People like say, this guy: Rep. Tim Huelskamp of Kansas who as a true Dyed-in-the-Wool Tea Bagger that was swept into Congress in 2010, has voted dozens of times to repeal the law and strongly supported the Government Shutdown to defund it last year. It simply can't be the case, that the law he fought so hard to repeal and defund - actually works can it?
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/...
WASHINGTON -- Rep. Tim Huelskamp (R-Kan.) said Monday he believes the uninsured rate in his state has increased since implementation of the 2010 health care reform law.
"It's hard to get accurate numbers on anything," Huelskamp told his constituents at a town hall in Salina, Kan., according to video posted by Eagle Community Television. "But the numbers we see today is that -- as I understand them -- we believe there are more people uninsured today in Kansas than there were before the president's health care plan went into effect. And I thought the goal was to bring more people into insurance."
Because when you Truly
Believe you can Fly you really can - just not so close to the ledge there Tim.
But here's the thing, truth doesn't depend on Tim Heulskamp's "Belief" - it's something that is verifiable, as long as - you know - you can COUNT! But of course since Tim didn't mention whether he meant 2010 - when the the law was actually passed - or 2013 - when the last of it's provisions and the exchanges went into effect - let's look at both.
A report published in December by the Kansas Health Institute found the state's uninsured rate declined from 13.2 percent to 12.6 percent between 2009 and 2012. Scott Brunner, a senior analyst at the nonprofit organization, told The Huffington Post on Wednesday that "it will be next year before we even get much of a read on the first year of implementation." That's when the U.S. Census Bureau should release more data.
And so after 2013 and the hickups of the troubled roll-out? Could that be what he meant?
It's true that Kansas was one of the states that both refused to setup their own exchange and also to accept the Medicaid expansion, so if we're open-minded and honest we have to admit that their enrollment numbers were not nearly as great as say- California or New York who did both.
To verify this we have ACASignup.net spreadsheet, which in turn leads us to the February HHS report on signups for those numbers and they don't appear to my eyes, to be negative as Timmy would suggest.
Kansas Exchange QHP Signups as of 3/01: 29,301
CBO projected target for Kansas: 61,000
% of QHP Target Reached: 48.05%
Est for <26 Remaining on Parents Plan: 25,000
No Data for Off-Exchange QHP Signups.
Even if you don't like ObamaCare, having ~54,000 people with Health Insurance who didn't have it when the program began in 2009 should be considered a good thing. Unless you go out of your way to make it look like a bad thing because the KS enrollment rate compared to the projection is so low when compared to D.C. (212%) or California (174%).
Perhaps, maybe, what Rep Huelskamp meant is that the population of Kansas has out paced the number of additional healthcare signups. The Census Bureau states Kansas 2012 Population as 2,885,905, with an average increase from the previous year of 1.1%. Over the past ten years the population of Kansas has increased from between a low point of 9,469 in 2003 to a high point of 24,628 in 2009 with the average over that period being 16,290 additional people per year.
So in order for the rate of uninsured to Rise following the Full ObamaCare launch last October, the population of Kansas would have had to just about double their average rate of growth since last year in order to still be negative even after over 29,000 new people selected health plans using the Federal Exchange as of February.
I'm thinking that's not too likely.
Yet there is one more possibility as to what Rep Huelskamp thinks is going on with health care in his state. It's possible that he believes that the number of people who may have had their non-ACA compliant plans cancelled outnumbers the the number of people who may have signed up.
There's only one significant problem with that theory.
Kansas happens to be one of the states whose Insurance Commissioner allowed for a 1 Year extension on Non ACA Compliant Plans, which means that none of those plans could be cancelled. As a result companies decided to resume the old plans as confirmed by this report from The Business Journal.
Kansas' largest health insurer, Blue Cross Blue Shield of Kansas, is notifying 10,000 of its policyholders that for another year, they can keep health care plans that were to be cancelled under new Affordable Care Act regulations, The Topeka Capital...
That report was from November 20, 2013, less than a week after the President announced that he would ask State Commissioners to
restore these plans.
Further even if they had allowed for Insurance companies to cancel those plans, the existing law, required all of those companies to offer automatic enrollment in a new plan - with a new price and new deductible - so the issue wasn't that people would have NO PLAN, but that they would have been offered a different plan if not for the Commissioner taking action.
So if tens of thousands didn't lose their plans in Kansas, and they didn't have another 30,000 people suddenly enter or be born in the State - there is literally No Possible Way [from what I can tell] that Rep Tim Huelskamps claim that "More people are now uninsured under Obamacare in Kansas" could possibly be true.
Because it isn't.
But that's probably not going to stop Heulskamp from saying it. He wants it to be true, he needs it to be true because if that's not true - if ObamaCare, on balance - is a net positive for the people of Kansas, if it does what the CBO has long said to benefit the deficit, if it brings HealthCare to Millions of Americans, if it help curb and prevent avoidable disease and infection, if it reduces the pain and suffering of those with chronic illnesses -- then Rep Heulskamp would look Pretty Bad to continue to oppose all of that.
It would almost be as if he preferred that Americans couldn't get insurance and as a result would either suffer and die in silence or else be forced to play the game of Emergency Room Roulette only when the pain and discomfort from an illness became so great they couldn't stand it anymore - which is very often when it has already become too serious and advanced to treat effectively.
But that couldn't be the case, or could it?
Vyan