Nancy Pelosi, according to a Truth Index/Politi-Score review done on her last year, is sort of the Democrat version of Michele Bachmann—she has a penchant for making way-out, almost indefensible statements that often catch her Pants on Fire. In this PolitiFact ruling, she claimed that under the new healthcare law (“Obamacare”) “everybody will have lower rates, better quality care and better access." I thought I’d take a look…and found it was “defensible” enough for Grading PolitiFact Liberal Style.
PolitFact’s writer Jon Greenberg gives two caveats to why the “everybody” isn’t true. One is that there’s a “catch” to using averages: some people would pay more than the average, some less. Yes, but if everyone “on average” pay less, they’re still paying less “overall.”
The second caveat, however, is even more “defensible.”
But in its study, the CBO number crunchers actually predict that a large number of people will want to buy better insurance. They would opt for a lower deductible, lower co-pays and a wider range of benefits. That personal choice would cause their total premiums to rise some 27 to 30 percent. For a policy covering just one person, the difference would be about $600 a year, before accounting for any of the subsidies the law provides; over half the people in the individual market would qualify for those subsidies.
PolitiFact’s Greenberg did not consider the “value” of what the person who chose to buy a more expensive policy was trading up to. For example, if the better policy had lower co-pays and deductibles, and the person buying the upgraded policy made use of them, those co-pays and deductibles could more than make up for the price paid. Or, as explained by one writer to PolitiFact in a recent mailbag issue:
I have a strong objection to one element of your analysis. Your second caveat claims that some people will pay more because the ‘discounted’ rate will entice them to purchase better coverage. I fail to see how this has anything to do with the veracity of Pelosi's statement, or lack thereof. Pelosi used the words ‘lower rates.’ Just because people buy more insurance does not necessarily mean the rate increases, since ‘rate,’ in this case, means level of services divided by cost. If people buy better insurance, they pay more, but their level of services increases as well. When people hear ‘lower rates,’ they assume you're talking apples-to-apples for level of service. It may very well be that in light of your first caveat, Pelosi's statement is still False. But the second half of your argument is bogus.
Finally, there’s the underlying argument of “something’s better than nothing"--even if everybody doesn't use it, it's available to everybody. Access to insurance for pre-existing conditions, encouraging preventative care by eliminating cost sharing, allowing young adults to stay on their parent’s plan until they turn 26 years old, closing the Medicare prescription drug donut hole, these are but a few of the many improvements to our healthcare system with ACA.
Often when PolitiFact is evaluating a statement and finds one part arguable (“average coverage”) and another part having some truth (because “rate” and “value” were not taken into consideration), and finally, deem the underlying argument (it should be better than what we have now!) as having truth, they would rate a statement, at least, an inconclusive Half True. But not Democrat Nancy Pelosi talking about the Affordable Care Act. Conservative bias, anyone?
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