You Decide

"MIssing" mostly from Latin America

Source Powerlineblog.com

September 10, 2009 Posted by Paul at 8:30 AM

"Last night, Scott wrote about "Obama's missing millions." These are the 16 million people who were included when President Obama said last month that 46 million Americans lack health coverage but excluded when, in his speech to Congress, Obama lowered the number to 30 million.

It seems clear that most of these missing millions (9.6 milllion, in fact) are non-citizens, and, in most of these cases, illegal immigrants. The remainder, I assume, are people who are enrolled in Medicaid or S-CHIP but didn't tell the census taker. This is the so-called "Medicaid undercount," discussed here.

So Obama counted non-citizens as "Americans [who] don't have health coverage" in his Portsmouth, New Hampshire speech when he wanted to inflate the number of uninsured Americans so as to persuade us that there's an enormous crisis. He then discounted them when the charge that Democrats will insure illegal aliens gained traction.

Obama and his supporters want to call this charge a lie, but the "lie" begins to look true when illegal immigrants are included among those whose situation the legislation is designed to remedy -- "Americans" who don't have health coverage. The "lie" is, in fact, substantially true because Democrats have defeated all efforts to include an enforcement mechanism that would prevent illegal aliens from being covered.

Stated more concisely, in order to make his opponents out to be lying, our slippery president must now abandon his prior false statement."

http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2009/09/024480.php

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"Obama's missing millions

Source Powerlineblog.com

September 9, 2009 Posted by Scott at 8:39 PM

"Only last month In Portsmouth, New Hampshire, President Obama declared: "I don't have to explain to you that nearly 46 million Americans don't have health insurance coverage today. In the wealthiest nation on Earth, 46 million of our fellow citizens have no coverage."

Tonight Obama declared that "[t]here are now more than 30 million American citizens who cannot get coverage.he number of our fellow citizens who have no coverage is 30 million."

These statements can be reconciled. "Nearly 46 million" is "more than 30 million[.]" But this is obviously not what Obama meant. It would be a mistake to reconcile the statements in this way. In any event, both numbers are bogus. It would be a mistake to take either of them seriously.

What can we learn from the malleable, missing millions who provide the pretext for Obama's proposed takeover of the health care system? He willfully misrepresents the magnitude of the problem. He is not to be trusted with numbers. He does not fear being called out on the obvious discrepancies on the fundamental rationale he presents to support his program, whatever it is.

He will say whatever he deems necessary to seek to persuade his audience. A man who refuses to get this issue right cannot be trusted with the more important facts, figures and propositions with which his speech was larded.

UPDATE: Byron York: "Obama: I used to say 47 million uninsured. Now, it's 30 million." At this rate, if we can wait until November, the problem may resolve itself.

JOHN adds: The number of "uninsured" who have suddenly disappeared amount to three and a half times the population of the State of Minnesota. You get the feeling that Barack Obama is a person to whom numbers don't mean much. He's not someone you would put in charge of a business."

http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2009/09/024477.php