Today’s Must-Must-Read: Matthew Yglesias: A Chart Obamacare’s Critics Have a Hard Time Explaining

A chart that Obamacare s fiercest critics will have a hard time explaining Vox

Matthew Yglesias: A Chart Obamacare’s Critics Have a Hard Time Explaining: “The share of Americans who lack health insurance coverage plunged again last quarter…. More than 3 million… went from uninsured to insured over the past quarter…

…way lower than where it was when the company started counting. Every time one of these quarterly reports comes out, I hear from conservatives saying to me that of course a law that mandates the purchase of insurance and then subsidizes it will succeed in getting people health insurance. And I agree! But conservatives didn’t always. A year or two ago, people up and down the food chain from incredibly popular conservative media celebrities to incredibly obscure conservative think tank wonks were making the case that Obamacare wasn’t expanding coverage. Rush Limbaugh… Rich Lowry… an American Enterprise Institute health policy scholar…. A decline in the uninsured rate is, in part, a reflection of the growing strength of the economy and the accelerating pace of job creation…. [But] conservatives also predicted that Obamacare would destroy the economy. In a 2011 press conference, John Boehner used the phrase ‘job killing’ once every two minutes. Then in 2012 we had the best year of job creation since 2005. In 2013 we had an even better year of job creation. Then in 2014, we had an even better year, the best since 1999.

April 14, 2015

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