Michael Moore: Still Wrong, But Getting Closer

Michael Moore is having trouble maintaining his own hyperbole. The filmmaker who claimed in “SiCKO” that “nearly 50 million Americans” are without health insurance, has been dropping the number.

I doubt it’s because he read Business & Media Institute's expose on uninsured statistics that proves his number to be absolutely wrong.

Nevertheless, Moore used a lower figure on the July 10 “Larry King Live.”

“And when you’ve got 47 million people in this country with no health insurance, they don’t go to the doctor because they can’t afford it,” Moore said on the CNN show.

Then the number dropped again when Moore appeared on “The Colbert Report” July 19.

In an interview on the Comedy Central show, Stephen Colbert asked Moore if he believed everybody should have health care.

“So 45 million Americans don’t have health care – they don’t have health insurance?” asked Colbert. “That’s right,” replied Moore.

Moore later used the same figure to make a point about wait times.

“That’s why we don’t have maybe as long of a wait that you have in other countries because we’ve removed 45 million people [with no health insurance] from the line,” said Moore.

While Moore trots out his shrinking statistic about the number of uninsured Americans, he’s still wrong. Census data makes it clear that nearly 10 million of the 47 million uninsured are not citizens of the United States.