Across the health care debate, supporters of Obamacare have tried to inflate the number of uninsured, and too often they have gotten away with it. Yesterday, for instance, a Huffington Post banner headline read, “Number of Uninsured Americans Soars to Over 50 Million.” But this claim cannot withstand examination.
The Huffington Post story relies on a “sobering new report” from the decidedly pro-Obamacare Kaiser Foundation. The Kaiser Foundation report, in turn, bases its findings of 50 million uninsured Americans (under the age of 65) on the Current Population Survey’s Annual Social and Economic Supplement (CPS ASEC), published by the Census Bureau. Kaiser describes the CPS ASEC as “the primary source of annual health insurance coverage information in the United States” and as “the most frequently cited national survey on health insurance coverage.”
