McConnell health claim debunked

From today's Courier-Journal:

Kentucky's senior Sen. Mitch McConnell has won a coveted "Four Pinocchios" from The Washington Post for a statement in a recent opinion piece in this newspaper blasting the Affordable Care Act.

That means he was really, really wrong, sort of like the "Pants on Fire" designation Politifact reserves for whoppers.

McConnell’s stale, inflated claim about health-plan cancellations

The Washington Post's Fact Checker gives Mitch McConnell "Four Pinocchios":

Unlike some Republican lawmakers, McConnell was not claiming that there has been a reduction in the number of insured or that 216,000 remained uninsured. In that respect, his comment was carefully crafted. But McConnell’s claim that 280,000 Kentuckians have received cancellation notices does not hold up to scrutiny.

Although 280,000 was a broad estimate released by the state in November, Kentucky officials reduced the figure by 40 percent just a month later — and yet McConnell is still citing outdated numbers. Moreover, because termination notices are sent on a rolling basis, it’s likely that far few notices have even been sent.

Finally, even if 280,000 was correct and even if all notices had been sent, it’s still the wrong number to use when referring to individual health plans purchased on the exchange, as 280,000 is the sum of individual and small-group plans.