They Still Can't Stop Lying About Obamacare, Yet Again

Republicans and conservative pundits will never stop lying to you about Obamacare, America.  And for once, it's not the usual suspect (Forbes hack Avik Roy) but the Indiana GOP doing the lying.  That's right, we've gone from pundits making up statistics to state insurance officials doing it, and Washington Post health care writer Sarah Kliff catches them red-handed:

The average health insurance plan in Indiana will increase by 72 to percent next year and hit $570 under the 2010 health-care law, the state announced Friday. What does that tell us?

It certainly doesn’t tell us insurance coverage in Indiana will be cheap; that much is obvious. But it doesn’t really tell us that Indiana’s premiums are outrageous – in fact, when you dig into the documents insurers’ filed, it turns out Indiana’s rates look a lot like the rest of the country.

The $570 figure that Indiana put out Friday doesn’t, in fact, tell us much at all. It’s pretty much just a great number to make the cost of health insurance sound expensive in Indiana and a horrible one to use in thinking about how much Hoosiers will pay for coverage come January.

Cherry-picked numbers to put the worst-possible spin on Obamacare?  Surely you're joking!  Why, Republicans would never do that!  You know, except for doing it constantly for the last three years.

Indiana’s $570 figure comes from squishing together all the filings –- every plan that is bronze, platinum or anywhere in between –- and coming up with one composite. We don’t know whether a bronze plan in Indiana will be incredibly expensive, which is certainly a possibility, or if some high-priced platinum offerings are pushing up the average.

In other words, let's say Indiana wouldn't tell you what community college tuition cost in the state for 2014.  What if instead, they gave you the average cost for every college, community, two-year, four-year, public, and private, then said OMG community college costs went up A ZILLION PERCENT?

That's exactly what Indiana did with health care premiums.  Just like Avik Roy, they refuse to compare apples to apples, but instead compare apples to the average price of all fruit!  The entire point of the number is to make it look bad, and to make Indianans want to repeal Obamacare.  And it all because the GOP has nothing better to do but lie to their constituents.  This isn't some hack pundit doing this, these are state officials.

By the way, checking to see what premiums actual insurance companies are charging for silver level plans, they come out to $300-$400 a month for individual plans.  That's a far cry from $570, yes?

But you'd never know if you ask state Republicans.  They're too busy lying to you because they think Hoosiers are stupid.