In the history of PolitiFact rulings, from its beginnings in 2007 to the election of 2012, the most covered subject was healthcare. PolitiFact currently has 42 pages of rulings related to healthcare. While there's a lot of overlap with other subjects (particularly fiscal ones) as designated in every ruling, my counts for 6,535 PolitiFact rulings show healthcare and Medicare were the "main" subject(s) for over 10 percent of them.
In 2007, the very first characterization of a Democrat national healthcare reform plan as "socialized medicine" which earned a False was from budding 2008 presidential candidate Rudy Giuliani. PolitiFact called it "pure hyperbole." In early 2008, eventual 2012 presidential candidate Mitt Romney was the first person fact-checked for what would become the PolitiFact 2010 Lie of the Year--that "Obamacare" (the meme not yet invented for healthcare reform) was a "government take over" of the healthcare system.
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| Click to enlarge: Low number of Democrat rulings caused larger swings |
There were very few fact-checks (12) evenly divided between party on healthcare reform as it related to Obama's proposals in 2007 and 2008, compared to what happened after he became president. So the Truth Index+ at that time did not tell us much. Indeed, as I noted in a previous post on what caused the big increase in Pants on Fire assignments to Republicans, the year 2009 was a very big ruling year when it came to healthcare reform and Obamacare. In that year, over 1/4 of PolitiFact rulings related to that topic.
Obamacare, however, was the leading PolitiFact ruling topic in 2009: healthcare was the subject of over 30% of the rulings with about 27% relating to healthcare reform, and made up over 1/3 of the Pants on Fire. With the majority coming from Republicans, this was for the most part what drove up the Pants on Fire factor against them.
The year 2010 was not as important in terms of PolitiFact's concentration on Obamacare; it was a pivotal year, however, in terms of the Republicans doubling down on attacking it. Republicans dominated on dubious healthcare claims as 64 fact-checks brought their Obamacare Truth Index+ down to under 34. It continued into 2011 and worsened in 2012. The number of Obamacare-related rulings doubled from 2011 to 2012, when it seemed as if the Republicans thought the public dislike of it would get them the same type of election results as in 2010.
The Democrats had a big swing in the Truth Index+ between 2010 and 2011, but this was more related to the fact they were only rated 28 times in the two years (16 in 2010, 12 in 2011). While they had more rulings in 2012 (25), they still had about 20% of what was done on the Republicans in 2012 (121 rulings). Overall, Republicans received almost 3/4 of all Obamacare-related rulings.
Compared to the current overall Truth Index+ of 54.2, the Obamacare Truth Index+ is about 30% lower at 38.8: 51.5 for Democrats, and 34.3 for the GOP. As far as the Pants on Fire factor, it was assigned 6.22 times more to Republicans than Democrats when the claim related to Obamacare.
The effect on the Republican Truth Index+ overall would be to increase it by 3.2% if there were no Obamacare claims. The Democrats would see about a .5% increase.
The Republican attack on "Obamacare" certainly depressed its Truth Index+ and contributed to an increased Pants on Fire factor. Government take overs, death panels of bureaucrats and huge tax increases as a result of the healthcare reform resulted in the majority of Pants on Fire awards, each debunked six or seven times. The starting at $500 billion and now about $700-plus billion in Medicare "cuts", while not deemed Pants on Fire most of the time (*mostly* Mostly False), was repeated about 30 times. So much so, that even PolitiFact Manager Bill Adair called it the "talking point that wouldn't die."
He even said that the reason the talking point was used so much was because....it worked. So when a certain someone complains about PolitiFact being biased, perhaps he should keep in mind that not only does the fact-check not get read by everyone, but not everyone even believes it. Leave it to Fox News, eh?
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