What Happened to Those 17 Million Uninsured?

I just could not watch Obama last night. I was slightly curious as to what his spin would be, but I, like Joe Wilson, can't stomach the lies anymore.

I've been monitoring the press and the feedback on the speech, though, and see that even Politico is trying to sort through the blather this morning. They've got a piece that sorts out what he said and what he really meant.

Most accounts I've seen this morning are addressing the fact that Obama has suddenly dropped the number of uninsured from 47 million to 30 million, now excluding illegals from his number. In the beginning, when he started to sell this box of rocks, he thought if he told us 47 million Americans were uninsured, we'd be horrified and rush to support his plan. That many Amercians can't go without insurance! Horrors! But the American public was not so easily duped; we saw through that. We know that 47 million is an inflated number. We read the statistics that support our conclusion.

So now Obama has dropped the number to 30 million so we'll all say, "Ahh! That's so much better! Of course we can support the plan!" But....of that 30 million, a large number of those are already eligible for Medicaid and just never enrolled. And an even larger number make enough dough to purchase insurance and just don't want it. So the number COULD drop even further.

And we're going to dismantle the health care system for that? What he hasn't yet realized is that when people feel lied to, they quit listening to you. They quit believing you. They quit trusting you. Not everyone feels lied to, of course. Nancy Pelosi still believes him, I guess.

What the lowering number of uninsured shows is that Obama realizes that the number of Americans without health insurance isn't as high as he wants us to believe. It tells us that he knew he was lying when he used the 47 million figure; he knew that was inflated. He'd HAVE to know that. He didn't care. He's selling snake oil here. He's lying. Joe Wilson was right.

Update: Professor Jacobson covers the illegal issue here; Memeorandum covers everything else!