Obama’s Misleading Obamacare Claims

Bethany Stotts — July 25, 2013

Supporters of Obamacare were given reason to celebrate on July 17 when The New York Times announced that health care premiums in the Empire State could “tumble” 50% because of the new health care exchanges. “Obama touted recent news from New York, California, Oregon and other states that have reported that insurance companies will charge lower-than-expected premiums next year,” reported the Los Angeles Times. “And he highlighted a provision of the law that requires insurance companies to provide rebates if they don’t spend at least 80% of the premiums they receive on their customers’ medical care, rather than administrative expenses, such as executive salaries or dividends for shareholders.”
This week, in his prepared remarks for Knox College, President Obama once again touted this 50% decrease in premiums, saying: “Just last week, New York announced that premiums for consumers who buy their insurance in these online marketplaces will be at least 50% less than what they pay today. That’s right—folks’ premiums in the individual market will drop by 50%.”
This feather in President Obama’s cap serves as an example for some liberals of how the Affordable Care Act is just that—an affordable way to purchase health care for your family, coming soon to a state near you.
Except that it isn’t. As Accuracy in Media has repeatedly demonstrated, in reality, Obamacare instead causes health care premiums to skyrocket—even in the much-touted California market. According to Avik Roy of Forbes, however, Obamacare will increase individual health insurance premiums [in California] by 64 to 146% in one year.”
For New York State it is a different story. That’s because a series of “reforms” made there in the 1990s which over-regulated health care, got rid of preexisting conditions, and mandated that insurance companies charge the same regardless of age, according to Roy. “New York premiums have nowhere to go but down,” charges Roy in his latest article for Forbes. As he previously pointed out, when liberals championed the less-than-expected rate increases in California, this was an “apples to oranges” comparison.