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Obamacare definitely has winners and losers, but for some reason Republicans have trouble finding the losers. Glenn Kessler at The Washington Post walked through two more would be horror stories in Wednesday's fact checker: Sen. Rand Paul argued that for every one Obamacare enrollment in his state, 40 plans were cancelled, and a Nebraska woman worried that her premiums would go up (they didn't). Despite raising legitimate concerns some people have had — cancelled policies and higher premiums, often for more comprehensive insurance — Republicans still struggle to find people who have actually been inconvenienced.
In his May 2 newsletter, Rand Paul asked people to share their Obamacare stories, noting that "for every Kentuckian who has enrolled in Obamacare, 40 have been dropped from their coverage." Politifact rated this lie "pants on fire," since the 82,795 people enrolled in private plans and 330,615 enrolled in Medicaid. It's estimated that 130,000 to 168,000 plans were cancelled, though many of those individuals were re-enrolled into new plans.
Acknowledging that not everyone enrolled in Medicaid because of Obamacare (they might have already been eligible), Paul's 40-to-1 ratio is still absurd. Paul's spokesman Brian Darling told the Post that the figure was outdated: it compared 7,000 private plan enrollees as of November 2013 to 280,000 private and small group plan cancellations. Given that, by some estimates, Obamacare cut Kentucky's uninsured level by 40 percent, Kentucky might not be the best place to look for horror stories.