Republican congressional leaders seem to have distributed some talking points to GOP congressmen before leaving Washington, D.C. for the August recess.

Yesterday, Rep. Mark Kirk made the baseless claim that the uninsured population is not as large as the Democrats claim it to be. His figures are almost identical to the Heritage Foundation's unsourced "Liberal Myth" primer on health care. On KTRS Radio today, Rep. John Shimkus repeated a similar line. Listen here:

Internal mp3

SHIMKUS: If there are 45 million uninsured Americans, how does that break down? It breaks down into about a one-third being young adults who probably could pay for some health insurance coverage but they're super-human and they don’t want to. One-third are citizens who have access to government plans but they're not taking advantage of them -- either they don’t know about them or they're just not accessing them. So the bottom third are the ones we really have to be concerned about, who are in essence the working poor who cant afford it. Half of those might be illegal immigrants. The other half -- 8 to 10 [million] -- could be those. How do we address that problem?

For our rejoinder to this flawed breakdown of the uninsured population, check out this post from earlier today.

In dismissing a large chunk of the uninsured as individuals who can afford health insurance but "don't want to" pay for it, Shimkus and Kirk ignore one of the most outrageous side-effects of our private insurance system: the numerous Americans denied coverage due to preexisting health issues. A recent Commonwealth Fund survey found that in the past three years, "nearly three-quarters of people who tried to buy coverage in an individual market never actually purchased a plan, either because they could not find one that fit their needs or that they could afford, or because they were turned down due to a preexisting condition."  By assuming that many of these folks -- due to their income level -- are voluntarily forgoing health coverage, Shimkus and Kirk show how out of touch they really are. 

Meanwhile, as unemployment rises, so does the number of people in danger of losing their employer-based coverage. And let's not forget the 20,000 Americans previously insured by the nation's three largest insurance companies who lost their coverage between 2003 and 2007 because of the practice known as rescission. Many of these folks would be provided coverage on the public plan Shimkus equates with "socialism." Without it, insecurity, bankruptcy, and serious medical problems are much more likely.