George Will Gets It Right

Former governor from Ohio, Ken Blackwell, sources columnist, Ceorge Will on healthcare and who benefits.

Now, the operative question is this: Has Obama's team also misread the numbers on health care reform? The big number, the number which drives all the other numbers is 45.7 million. That's the number of Americans said to be lacking health insurance. If that number is accurate, it's still less than one in six Americans. But is it accurate?
Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist George Will has raised serious questions about that 45.7 million figure. He notes that 39% of the uninsured live in the border states of California, Texas, Arizona, New Mexico, and Florida. An estimated 21% of the uninsured are not U.S. citizens. That's 9.7 million, a huge chunk of that fabled 45.7 million figure.
A further 9.1 million of the uninsured have household incomes of $75,000 or greater. These folks could afford insurance but choose not to be insured. There are, Will notes, 14 million Americans who are already eligible for currently funded programs -- like SCHIP, veterans' benefits, Medicare, and Medicaid.
The more closely we examine these figures, the more that number of 45.7 million begins to melt away, like an iceberg floating south. As long as there have been governments, they have been mesmerized by numbers -- some of which prove to be seriously inaccurate.