New numbers from a report on ObamaCare estimate that only just over a third of enrollees were previously uninsured, and that 5.2 million have lost their health coverage since it began. Although Fox News has covered the report, the networks have ignored it so far.
"A report by the RAND corporation this week said 5.2 million people have lost health coverage since ObamaCare started," said Fox News host Bret Baier on Thursday's Special Report. Fox Business host Neil Cavuto reported the night before that "RAND estimates that most of those who did join newly established exchanges were not insured before." [Video coming soon. Audio here.]
Forbes' Avik Roy wrote the other day that the report, from the research firm RAND corporation, "indicates that ObamaCare's exchanges only enrolled 1.4 million previously uninsured individuals." Roy went on to add that out of 3.6 million enrollees, that means only 36 percent were previously uninsured."
Roy cautioned that the report does not include enrollment numbers from the last few weeks before the deadline. He noted, though, that the original CBO estimate was that "80 to 90 percent of the first-year enrollees" would have been previously uninsured, of which the 36 percent estimate falls woefully short.
Below are transcripts of the segments:
SPECIAL REPORT
4/11/14
BRET BAIER: A report by the RAND corporation this week said 5.2 million people have lost health coverage since ObamaCare started.
FOX BUSINESS
CAVUTO
4/11/14
NEIL CAVUTO: And that is our top story tonight, what to make of this media silence on the real health care law story since. It's almost as if they don't care, or maybe they do and they're just bored. Because the nonpartisan research firm RAND corporation now estimates that 9.3 billion Americans gained insurance coverage since the Affordable Care Act came into being. It sounds great, right? Well, not quite. RAND estimates that most of those who did join newly established exchanges were not insured before. RAND just doesn't quantify what it means by most. So let's say "most" is 51 percent. Again, I will be conservative here. That's about 4.65 million who you technically can't count as new enrollees because they had some form of prior coverage. And RAND reports that employers, not exchanges, accounted for much of the rise in the newly covered.
