Wednesday was a difficult day for The American Independent News Network, which is the larger entity that operates The Iowa Independent. Our chief executive and founder announced two of our sister sites would close and their content would be moved to The American Independent.
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The Iowa Senate will remain under the control of a slim 26-25 Democratic majority when it reconvenes in January 2012.
A figure regularly cited by Democrats, most recently U.S. Sen. Tom Harkin of Iowa, that 14,000 Americans lose their health insurance every day is no longer accurate, according to analysis by PolitiFact.
Research showed the number had fallen since the summer to roughly 8,000 people a day.
U.S. Sen. Tom Harkin (Lauren Victoria Burke/WDCPIX.COM)
The Pulitzer Prize winning Web site run by the staff of the St. Petersburg Times originally fact checked the claim in July and determined it was true. But because their evaluation was based on unemployment numbers that have since changed, and because Harkin used the figure in a speech on the Senate floor Sunday, the staff decided “the talking point was due for a checkup.”
What they found was that the 14,000 figure was no longer true. The number of people who lose their insurance has fallen to a still sizable 7,784 per day, based on a model developed by Urban Institute health care scholar John Holahan.
Holahan and his co-author, using a baseline of 4.6 percent unemployment in 2007, calculated that 2.6 million people would lose coverage if the unemployment rate climbed to 7 percent; 3.7 million if it went to to 8 percent; 4.8 million at 9 percent; and 5.8 million at 10 percent. The estimates took into account people who lost their jobs but then switched to a spouse’s plan or extended their coverage through COBRA, the federal law that guarantees people who lose their job can still get continued health coverage.
Applying Holahan’s calculations to the actual rise in unemployment from November 2008 to June 2009, we found that the number was right around the 14,000 people per day that [President Barack] Obama cited. We checked with health care experts, and they, too, agreed that the 14,000 number was just about right.
When extended out through November, though, the number falls. Since January, unemployment has risen from 7.6 percent to 10 percent, meaning 2.6 million jobs have been lost so far in 2009, according to Holahan’s calculations. Dividing 2.6 million by 334 days means 7,784 people lost insurance every day.
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