Here’s a real dog bites man story of the day. Conservatives are spreading false information about Obamacare. And yes, it is also shocking that gambling is going on at Rick’s.
You know those teaser rates that insurance companies advertise all over the internet? You know, those rates you will never get unless you are young, in perfect health, and you had wisely chosen to be born into a very healthy family? Guess what? Those rates are lower than the rates which will be available to real people in the insurance exchanges under the Affordable Care Act. Not to mention the fact that, without Obamacare, the changes of getting an affordable policy on the individual market if you have any medical problems or are over 40 is pretty low.
Jonathan Kohn has a look at the distortion being spread by the right, starting with a writer at Forbes. Ezra Klein described the bogus rates which Avik Roy compared to the actual rates in the exchanges this way:
Roy got his 146 percent by heading to eHealthInsurance.com, running a search for insurance plans in California and comparing the cost of the cheapest plans to the cost of the plans being offered in the exchanges. That’s not just comparing apples to oranges. It’s comparing apples to oranges that the fruit guy may not even let you buy.
None of this stops right wing bloggers from citing Roy’s findings. None of this is a surprise. The only question is whether those spreading this argument are really this ignorant as to how insurance works, or if they are just spreading any lies because they hate Obamacare (for a multitude of reasons which don’t hold up to scrutiny).
