President Obama recently warned that if Congress junks the Affordable Care Act, “133 million Americans with pre-existing conditions” will be in jeopardy. That’s a phony figure, for several reasons. The actual number is roughly 500,000.

For starters, half of Americans get their insurance through an employer, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation. Another 34% are on Medicaid or Medicare. For all these people, pre-existing conditions are no barrier to coverage.

Pre-existing conditions mattered before ObamaCare only in the individual market, but even there few were affected. Many of these people with pre-existing conditions managed to get health coverage through the high-risk pools run by 35 states. Those pools covered about 225,000 people in 2011, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation.

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