Right Minded Online

You may have heard that there are 47 million Americans without health insurance. Don’t believe a word of it. It’s a myth.

The Democrats’ health care crisis is an issue that typically gets batted around every election cycle, although it will be in the forefront during the 2008 campaign season, with Democrat candidates for President falling over themselves in promising more government intrusion into America’s health care system.

The health care crisis received a great amount of attention back in 1992 when Bill Clinton made it a pillar of his candidacy. Then we were told there were 38 million Americans without health care, and President Clinton wanted government to fix the problem. Fifteen years later, that figure, so we are told, has risen to 47 million, which illustrates just how effective liberals are at solving problems.

Of course, President Clinton’s “solution” was a massive socialization program, dubbed “HillaryCare,” that might have provided health care for those 38 million Americans, but also would have ruined the system for all of us. So it’s actually a good thing that HillaryCare failed to pass the Democrat-led Congress back in 1994.

Now that Hillary Clinton has become the presumptive Democrat nominee for President, we are up against the ghastly prospect of HillaryCare II.

What about those 47 million Americans without health care? The Business and Media Institute, a Virginia-based division of the Media Research Center, has checked the numbers, and discovered that the actual number of long-term uninsured Americans is somewhere around ten million.

Not everyone, it turns out, should be included in that 47 million. (To be exact, the 2005 figure reported by the U.S. Census Bureau is 46.577 million.) The number of non-citizens lumped into that total is 9.487 million, and those earning at least $50,000 per year who are uninsured totals 17.04 million, so we’re already down to 20 million uninsured.

Rush Limbaugh, for example, is one of the 47 million Americans without health insurance. He chooses not to buy insurance because he can afford to pay for his health care out-of-pocket. Democrats who propose taxpayer-funded health care for the uninsured would have us pay for coverage for rich folks like Limbaugh. How would you liberals like your tax dollars going toward Rush Limbaugh’s doctor bills?

We have shown that the number of involuntary uninsured Americans is around 20 million. Statistics from the Congressional Budget Office show that 45 percent of those without health insurance will have coverage again within four months after switching jobs.

What we’re left with, therefore, are between 8.2 million and 13.9 million Americans who do not qualify for current government programs and who make less than $50,000 a year, or about 3-4% of the U.S. population. These are the true long-term uninsured.

Voters are going to be brow-beaten until next November with the myth that there are 47 million uninsured Americans, and that the only solution is bigger government and more taxes. The mainstream press does and will continue to regurgitate this number verbatim, with no attempt to put the figure into its proper context.

The Democrats’ objective with the health care crisis is the same as their objective with most other crises they invent, and that is more government control over our lives. So, to borrow some Clinton lingo, when you hear about those 47 million uninsured Americans, don’t inhale.