by Mike Casey and John Canham-Clyne
Four outlets who follow healthcare—Propublica, Vox, Stat and Kaiser Health News—teamed up to write “We Factchecked Lawmakers’ Letters to Constituents on Healthcare” (3/22/17), which stated flatly that the letters are “full of lies and misinformation.” As an example, they cited a claim to a constituent by Rep. Mike Bishop (R.-Mich.) that individual premiums are “slated to increase” under Obamacare by 73 percent, and that individual premiums for new purchasers would increase 96 percent.
The factcheckers correctly called Bishop out for citing an old 2013 study predicting that individual market premiums would be much higher upon full implementation of the ACA, and implying that it was a report on current numbers. But they went on to say:
In fact, premium increases by and large have been moderate under Obamacare. The average monthly premium for a benchmark plan, upon which federal subsidies are calculated, increased about 2 percent from 2014 to 2015; 7 percent from 2015 to 2016; and 25 percent this year, for states that take part in the federal insurance marketplace.
“Moderate”? In fact, as with employer-sponsored premiums, Obamacare premiums in the exchange marketplaces are growing at multiples of inflation:
- The 2 percent rise from 2014 to 2015 corresponded with a -0.1 percent decline in inflation.
- The ACA plans’ average 7 percent increase at the beginning of 2016 was 5 times the inflation rate (1.4 percent) for the 12 months ending January 2016.
- Leaving aside inflation, it’s unclear how a 25 percent price hike is “moderate,” but for the record, that was 10 times the 2.5 percent inflation rate for the period.
The ACA has failed to control costs and accelerated a national crisis of underinsurance. To tell readers otherwise comes across less as “factchecking” than as a partisan defense of the ACA.
Mike Casey is chair of the Healthcare Initiatives Task Force of UNITE HERE, a union of 270,000 North American hospitality workers. John Canham-Clyne is deputy director of research for UNITE HERE.