If so, this might come in handy: Help Us Fact-Check

Truth And Consequence: KHN Joins Team To Parse Lawmakers’ Lingo On Health Law. By Charles Ornstein, March 10, 2017

Meg Godfrey decided she needed to do more than vote …so she went to the website of Sen. Roy Blunt, R-Missouri.  “I asked him to use my tax dollars to provide health care to his constituents just like my tax dollars provide health care for him and his family”

A short while later, Godfrey received an email reply from Blunt, essentially a form letter explaining why he supported the law’s repeal. “When President Obama signed this bill into law, he assured Americans that they would be able to keep their plans and doctors, while promising choice and affordability,” Blunt wrote. “Since the law has gone into effect, I have heard from countless Missourians who were unable to keep their insurance plans and/or providers.”

The email then gave a number of statistics to buttress Blunt’s position that the law is failing.

But something about the letter didn’t sit right with Godfrey, so she forwarded the email to ProPublica, asking us to fact check it. Our assessment: The note was misleading and lacked important context.

They helped break down Blunt’s message:

Blunt’s email: “By the end of 2013, over 4.7 million Americans had their health care plans canceled.”

Analysis: The 4.7 million figure came from an Associated Press article from December 2013, Blunt’s office said. Subsequent analyses, however, showed that the figure was overstated…. the number was closer to 2.6 million. Moreover, Jost notes, the Obama administration said states could allow insurers to leave transitional plans in place after Jan. 1, 2014.  Missouri was one of the states that did so. “So if a plan was cancelled in Missouri, it was the decision of the insurer, not a federal requirement,”

Blunt’s email: “This year, Missourians who purchase health insurance on the ObamaCare exchanges will see an average of a 25 percent increase on their premium.”

Analysis: The average premium for a Missouri plan did indeed increase by 25 percent this year, according to ACAsignups.net, a website that tracks the law. But that isn’t the entire story. First, the vast majority of marketplace enrollees in Missouri and nationwide receive hefty subsidies that reduce their cost.

Second, if you step out of the aggregate and look instead at a hypothetical person shopping for an affordable plan, the increase is lower. The Obama administration often compared monthly premiums for a 27-year-old in a benchmark plan (the plan upon which the government calculates subsidies). In Missouri, the premium actually decreased from $235 to $233 between 2014 and 2015. It increased 10 percent in 2016 and another 18 percent, to $305, for this year, according to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

But most enrollees aren’t paying the sticker price. Some 78 percent of Missouri marketplace consumers in 2016 could obtain coverage for $100 or less per month in 2017, after accounting for subsidies from the government, federal data shows.

Blunt’s email: “In addition to increased costs, families in Missouri and across the nation have lost the ability to choose a plan that best suits their health care needs.   Missourians in 97 of 114 counties and the city of St. Louis will only have one option on the exchange.”

Analysis: Blunt is technically correct, but again the statistic lacks context, according to Politifact Missouri. “According to the U.S. Census Bureau, of Missouri’s roughly 6 million residents, about 63 percent live in the 17 counties and one city that will continue to have at least two provider choices,” the fact checker wrote in February.

What’s missing: Blunt’s email did not mention that more than 200,000 Missourians receive coverage through the Affordable Care Act exchanges. It also didn’t mention that health insurance premiums routinely increased by large amounts before the law took effect and that many Missourians with pre-existing conditions effectively had no insurers to pick from, Jost said.

The number of people without insurance has gone down under the ACA, falling from 13 percent in 2013 to 9.8 percent in 2015.