Another Republican Lie About Obamacare Is Exposed

For the last few years, since the introduction and passage of the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare), the Republicans have tried to scare Americans by telling lies about it. They wanted these scare tactics to convince Americans that Obamacare wouldn't work, and in fact, would be a disaster for health care in the United States.

They told Americans that Obamacare would create "death panels" for the elderly -- to decide if they should get care or just be allowed to die. That was immediately exposed as a lie when the law was passed -- and didn't contain any provision for death panels.

They tried to tell Americans they wouldn't be able to keep their family doctor under Obamacare. The truth is that nearly everyone has been able to keep the doctor they like -- and those few who haven't been able to do so is not because of Obamacare, but the private insurance companies not having that doctor on their approved list.

Then the Republicans claimed Obamacare would fail because people wouldn't cooperate and sign up for coverage. That lie was blown out of the water as more than 8 million Americans signed up to purchase private insurance under the program -- more than a million people than was predicted to sign-up.

But one of the most egregious claims they made was that Obamacare would cause health care prices to rise radically. That has now also been exposed as just another lie. The Altarum Institute's Center for Sustainable Health Spending has looked at the health care costs since Obamacare was passed and compared them to the rising costs before it was passed (in 2012 and 2013). What they found was that Obamacare has had little to no effect on health care costs. They continue to rise, but only by about the same margins that they were rising before Obamacare went into effect. As the chart above shows, the combined health care costs rose by about 1.7% in 2014, compared to a 1.2% rise in 2013 and a 2.0% rise in 2012.

The other major claim made by Republicans was that the cost of health insurance premiums would rise radically. The final verdict on that is still to come, since the new rates won't be known for a while. But what we do know is that the rates went down in many states this year (because of an Obamacare provision that 80% of premiums must be spent on medical care), and any substantial rate increase would have to be approved by a government panel now (which means it is unlikely).

I expect at this time next year we will know that ALL of the Republican claims about Obamacare were lies.

NOTE -- While health care costs have not risen radically as the Republicans claimed would happen, they are still rising (and are much higher than the health care costs per capita of other nations). Neither Obamacare nor the Republican solution (repeal Obamacare) will fix this. The only real solution to that is to take the next step, and go to a national single-payer government-run health insurance system (something like Medicare for all Americans).