Grading PolitiFact: Stephanie Cutter and the case of the missing fact check

It gets a little tiresome seeing PolitiFact repeatedly engage in partial reporting on its stories.  The following may represent the supreme example.

The issue:

(clipped from PolitiFact.com)

The fact checkers:

Angie Drobnic Holan:  writer, researcher
Bill Adair:  editor


Analysis

PolitiFact sets the stage:

The Republican response to attacks on the Ryan plan has been to attack back, saying President Barack Obama has cut "$700 billion" out of Medicare. And the Democratic response to that: Well, Paul Ryan cuts that amount, too!

PolitiFact selects the claim to check:

"You know, I heard Mitt Romney deride the $700 billion cuts in Medicare that the president achieved through health care reform," Cutter said. "You know what those cuts are? It’s taking subsidies away from insurance companies, taking rebates away from prescription drug company. Is that what Mitt Romney wants to protect? And interestingly enough Paul Ryan protected those cuts in his budget."

PolitiFact avows that it will focus on "whether Cutter is correct that Ryan relies on those same reductions in his budget."

PolitiFact uses the next nine grafs to outline the nature of the $700 billion reduction in Medicare expenditures projected by the CBO.

PolitiFact's source, a CBO report, communicates the nature of the reduction a bit more clearly than does PolitiFact (yellow highlights added):

Changes to Payment Rates in Medicare
In February 2011, CBO estimated that the permanent reductions in the annual updates to Medicare’s payment rates for most services in the fee-for-service sector (other than physicians’ services) and the new mechanism for setting payment rates in the Medicare Advantage program will reduce Medicare outlays by $507 billion during the 2012–2021 period. That figure excludes interactions between those provisions and others—namely, the effects of the changes in the fee-for-service portion of Medicare on payments to Medicare Advantage plans and the effects of changes in both the fee-for-service portion of the program and in the Medicare Advantage program on collections of premiums for Part B (Supplementary Medical Insurance).

The bulk of the reduction, then, occurs as the result of the two reductions the CBO identifies.  Therefore, we should expect to see both of those features in the Ryan budget plan at minimum to rate Cutter's statement true.

Having more-or-less identified the nature of the projected Medicare savings, PolitiFact proceeds to the next phase of its fact check:

Now onto [sic] our second question: Does Ryan’s budget keep the reductions in Medicare spending? The short answer is yes.

Here’s what Ryan said in an interview with George Stephanopolous of ABC News in June, before his selection as Romney’s running mate:

Stephanopoulos: "You know, several independent fact-checkers have taken a look at that claim, the $500 billion in Medicare cuts, and said that it's misleading. And in fact, by that accounting, your budget, your own budget, which Gov. Romney has endorsed, would also have $500 billion in Medicare cuts.

Ryan: "Well, our budget keeps that money for Medicare to extend its solvency. What Obamacare does is it takes that money from Medicare to spend on Obamacare. ..." (Read the full exchange.)

Do we know from that exchange that the cost reductions come from the same source?  I don't see how, and I invite any reader who sees it to explain it with a comment below.

Slate's Dave Weigel claimed that Ryan uses the same cap on Medicare spending as Obama.  But his explanation does not appear to help PolitiFact's argument.

Weigel (bold emphasis added):

Remember, Obamacare is supposed to save $700 billion by capping the rise in Medicare spending from GDP growth plus 0.5 percent. The Ryan budgets in 2012 and 2013 don’t alter Medicare for anyone entering it before 2022—a buffer that lets current retirees breathe easy. After 2022, it turns all of Medicare into a premium support plan like Medicare Advantage. At that point, “an annual competitive bidding process” is supposed to push providers to provide lower rates. “The per capita cost of this reformed program for seniors reaching eligibility after 2023,” explains Ryan in his budget guide, “could not exceed nominal GDP growth plus 0.5 percent.” So, if it works, it’s got the exact same Medicare cap as the Obama plan.

Weigel is talking about two different means of obtaining the same future rate of growth on Medicare spending.

As for PolitiFact, it's sticking with Paul Ryan's supposed confession:

So Ryan has confirmed his budget includes the Medicare savings.

"The" Medicare savings?  The same exact ones from the ACA and not just the future rate of growth pegged at the same percentage?  How do we know that?  Where is the fact check?

PolitiFact:

Still, Ryan himself said his plan did include the reductions in future spending that were part of the federal health care law.

Sorry, but that's not a fact check and it's very misleading.  PolitiFact is seizing on an ambiguity from Ryan and insisting that it perfectly dovetails with Cutter's claim.  A real fact check would verify from the text of Ryan's budget that the savings have the same origin as those projected by the CBO for the health care reform law.  This fact check doesn't do that at all.  Ryan's budget is neither listed among the sources on the sidebar nor linked in the text of the story.

Another of PolitiFact's sources helps confirm that PolitiFact simply blew this fact check. The CBO did attempt to score Ryan's budget proposal. The CBO did a baseline scenario using the assumption that the health care reform bill would remain in effect:

The baseline scenario incorporates policies restraining Medicare spending that are embedded in current law. Such policies include the sustainable growth rate mechanism, which determines the payment rates for physicians; payments to other providers in the fee-for-service portion of Medicare that would grow more slowly over roughly the next two decades than the cost of their inputs; and the  Independent Payment Advisory Board (established by the Affordable Care Act), which is required to make changes to the Medicare program to reduce spending if the growth in such spending is projected to exceed certain targets.

And the CBO created an alternate scenario where Medicare savings were much less:

The alternative fiscal scenario incorporates less restraint on Medicare spending.  Specifically, payments for physicians would not be reduced as they would be under the sustainable growth rate mechanism, and payments to other providers  would grow more rapidly than under the baseline scenario after roughly the next decade. The remaining restraints on Medicare spending could also have the potential consequences noted for the baseline scenario, but presumably to a much lesser extent because the restraints would be much less tight.

If the cost reductions are "protected" in the Ryan budget, then why does the CBO run an alternative scenario where the supposed protected cost reductions do not occur?

By all appearances, the PolitiFact team mailed it in on this fact check.  The evidence strongly suggests that the Ryan budget plan only relies on savings through ObamaCare to the extent that the CBO assumes that existing law will remain in effect--its standard procedure--while projecting the effects of Ryan's budget.

Cutter gets a "True" for that?


The grades:

Angie Drobnic Holan:  F
Bill Adair:  F

Seriously:  Where's the fact check?


Afters:

Here's one of those statements from the CBO that seems to have a tough time finding its way into PolitiFact's fact checks (bold emphasis added):

CBO’s cost estimate for the legislation noted that it will put into effect a number of policies that might be difficult to sustain over a long period of time. The combination of those policies, prior law regarding payment rates for physicians’ services in Medicare, and other information has led CBO to project that the growth rate of Medicare spending (per beneficiary, adjusted for overall inflation) will drop from about 4 percent per year, which it has averaged for the past two decades, to about 2 percent per year on average for the next two decades. It is unclear whether such a reduction can be achieved through greater efficiencies in the delivery of health care or will instead reduce access to care or the quality of care (relative to the situation under prior law). Also, the legislation includes a provision that makes it likely that exchange subsidies will grow at a slower rate after 2018, so the shares of income that enrollees have to pay will increase more rapidly at that point, and the shares of the premiums that the subsidies cover will decline.

Grading PolitiFact: Nancy Pelosi exempts ObamaCare from basic economics

“Even if you disagree, our articles will make you smarter.”
--attributed to PolitiFact editor Bill Adair by the Nashua Telegraph

The issue:

(clipped from PolitiFact.com)

The fact checkers:

Jon Greenberg:  writer, researcher
Angie Drobnic Holan:  editor

Analysis:

Why review PolitiFact's grading of Nancy Pelosi's truth-challenged statement when PolitiFact gives it a "False" rating and I don't think any "Pants on Fire" rating is fair?  It has to do with the epigraph above and a very recent PolitiFact Florida fact check of Gov. Rick Scott.

In short, PolitiFact misinforms.

First let's hit the transcript from "Meet The Press" (MSNBC, bold emphasis added):

DAVID GREGORY: Well, Republicans have said they won't waste any time to try to repeal this.  Is that fantasy from your point of view?

NANCY PELOSI: It's being the mouthpiece of the health insurance industry.  And we're saying let's not have them be in charge anymore.  Let the people be in charge of how they receive coverage and health care.  It's -- they'll bring it up, and when they bring it up they will ask for repeal, repeal of all the things I said that help children, help young adults, help seniors, help men or women who may have prostate cancer, breast cancer, whatever it is, any precondition.  And everybody will have lower rates, better quality care and better access.  So that's what they want to repeal, we're happy to have that debate.

Note to scouts:  Pelosi has trouble handling a softball down the center of the strike zone.

PolitiFact:

That last line is a bold statement, because "everybody" covers a lot of people. PolitiFact has looked at Republican allegations that the law is bad because it will drive up premiums for most people and found those statements False.

PolitiFact apparently neglected to publish its findings on those supposed Republican allegations.  Except maybe one.

But back to Pelosi and PolitiFact:

Pelosi’s statement allows us to make an assessment of the opposite point -- the law is good because everyone will save money.

Woohoo.

PolitiFact:

The Congressional Budget Office is designed to be the neutral analytic arm of Congress, and its study on how the ACA will affect insurance premiums is widely seen as the gold standard when it comes to projections. We called Pelosi’s office for background on her claim, and they pointed us to a CBO analysis of the law.

Pelosi’s staff highlighted part of the report that states that for people who buy insurance on their own -- the individual market as it’s called -- rates will be 7 to 10 percent lower. Rates for those in the "small group" market will be 1 to 4 percent lower; and there will be little appreciable change for those in the "large group" market.

PolitiFact points out that the explanation from Pelosi's office misinterprets the report.  An average decrease doesn't necessarily indicate that all share the savings. PolitiFact then explains a separate  problem inaccurately (bold emphasis added):

Second, the CBO did this section of its analysis assuming that people would buy the same kind of insurance they do today, without the new law. So if they have a $5,000 deductible and limited coverage today, the CBO analysts compared that to the rate they would pay in 2016 to get that same coverage under the law.

Because the ACA changes minimum standards for insurance plans in exchanges, the report calculates according to what people would pay today if they had the type of coverage the CBO expects them to purchase in 2016.  Some of today's insurance plans won't qualify for an exchange offering, so it makes no sense to calculate according to plans that will not exist on the exchange.

PolitiFact immediately follows up with another flawed explanation (bold emphasis added):

(I)n its study, the CBO number crunchers actually predict that a large number of people will want to buy better insurance. They would opt for a lower deductible, lower co-pays and a wider range of benefits. That personal choice would cause their total premiums to rise some 27 to 30 percent. For a policy covering just one person, the difference would be about $600 a year, before accounting for any of the subsidies the law provides; over half the people in the individual market would qualify for those subsidies.

The above explanation is contrary to the one offered in the CBO report (bold emphasis added):

The main elements of the legislation that would affect the amount of coverage purchased are the requirement that all new policies in the nongroup and small group markets cover at least a minimum specified set of benefits; the requirement that such policies have a certain minimum actuarial value; and the design of the federal subsidies, which would encourage many enrollees in the exchanges to join plans with an actuarial value above the required minimum.

While PolitiFact sells the resulting higher premiums entirely as a personal choice, the CBO explains them as two parts requirement and one part personal choice.   The personal choice, as it happens, reflects the opportunity to use other people's money (the subsidy) to obtain a better relative value on one's own expense.  A New York Times blog explains it well:

The premium subsidies will be based on the price of the second-lowest-cost silver plan in a geographic area. If you sign up for that particular silver plan, you will pay no more than 9.5 percent of your income in premiums. But if you decide you want lower cost-sharing and want to spring for a pricier gold or platinum plan, you will be responsible for paying the difference between that silver plan premium and those of the more expensive plans, pushing your share of the premium over that 9.5 percent cap, said Jennifer Tolbert, a health policy expert at the Kaiser Family Foundation.

Going with a more expensive plan may make sense, depending on your health, family medical history or other factors. “If they’re paying 20 percent of their income now for insurance, it may be worth it to pay 11 or 12 percent for a more generous plan on the exchange, because they’d get much better coverage,” Ms. Tolbert said.

And of course somebody has to pay for the subsidy in any case.

PolitiFact quoted Heritage Foundation's Ed Haislmaier regarding the tendency of subsidy recipients to upgrade their level of insurance but probably provided insufficient context for readers to properly understand what he was saying.

PolitiFact had Pelosi dead to rights on her trifecta of falsehood but ignored everything for the sake of the fact check except her claim about lower rates.  And then PolitiFact botched the reporting on that issue, making the ACA look better than it is.

Smarter.  Right.


The grades:

Jon Greenberg:  F
Angie Drobnic Holan:  F

Afters:

Pelosi completely misrepresents CBO data and gets a "False" rating from PolitiFact.  Rick Scott accurately represents CBO data and gets a "Mostly False" rating because he supposedly left out a huge amount of critical context.

The ratings make perfect sense in a liberally biased kind of way.

Grading PolitiFact (Florida): Rick Scott and rising insurance premiums under ObamaCare

PolitiFact regularly engages in prodigious spin on behalf of the health care reform bill.  The following case featuring Gov. Rick Scott of Florida and PolitFact's state operation in Florida serves as just one example among many.

The issue:

(clipped from PolitiFact.com)

The fact checkers:

Katie Sanders:  writer, researcher
Angie Drobnic Holan:  editor


Analysis:

PolitiFact quotes Rick Scott:

"(W)e know the Congressional Budget Office said if you’re going to buy your own policy with these exchanges you’ll be paying 10 percent more, or a family will. So about $2,100 more for a family. So you’re going to pay more with these exchanges."

PolitiFact finds that Scott spoke accurately:

As Scott said, CBO expected the average premium per person in new individual policies would rise 10 percent to 13 percent in 2016 compared with where it was before the law took effect.

In this market, average premiums per policy in this market would be about $5,800 for single policies (a $300 increase) and $15,200 for families (a $2,100 increase -- just like Scott said), according to CBO (pages 5 and 6).

If only the report ended there.

The third paragraph hints at significant caveats, especially since we note from the graphic at the top of the story that Scott receives a "Mostly False" rating.  Before we move on, however, note that Scott used the conservative end of the CBO estimate to back his statement.  He used 10 percent instead of 13 percent.  Sometimes PolitiFact uses such factors to award extra credit.  Apparently not this time.

Now for some mighty PolitiFact spin.

PolitiFact explains that using an "apples to apples" comparison in the same CBO report leads to the CBO's conclusion that the provisions of the PPACA lead to a net savings of 7 to 10 percent on the average premium.  The "apples to apples" comparison shows that the exchange system does provide some features that reduce insurance premiums.  The CBO report estimates that for equivalent plans the exchange would save 7-10 percent compared to current law.  Of course the exchanges require much higher levels of insurance, than the current average, and this spikes the cost of premiums.

The CBO's estimate of  the ACA's effect on nongroup insurance premiums

The CBO's chart makes clear that the increase in premiums stems from increases in insurance coverage.  Curiously, PolitiFact calls this a benefit:

People will pay more, but it will be for a bigger swath of benefits. The law requires insurance companies to offer an "essential health benefits" package that would mirror benefits people get through employer plans.

People receive benefits from insurance when their insurance pays for something.  A healthy person who goes to the doctor once per year for 10 years regardless of insurance coverage is not receiving any additional benefit from insurance coverage.  The person is paying much more for the same benefits.

PolitiFact actually refers to coverage when it refers to benefits.  The expanded scope of health coverage primarily enables the government to expand the pool of people paying for insurance so that healthy people who do not have an immediate need of insurance will help pay the benefits of others--a much wider swath of benefits.  In short, overall medical costs go way up while the premium costs per individual go down.  This from a bill that was sold as a means of controlling rising medical costs.  It doesn't do much at all to control costs.  Instead, it coerces the people into paying for higher overall costs.  And the bill contains measures that shift  costs from those who present the biggest risk to those with thicker wallets.

Where does that leave us on this fact check?  PolitiFact charges Scott with leaving things out, and we'll address those charges individually.

Many (CBO estimates 57 percent) seeking nongroup insurance through state exchanges would receive subsidies.

Scott specifically referred to persons paying for their own insurance through the exchanges, which implicitly acknowledges subsidies.  The availability of subsidies through the exchanges should be common knowledge.  It's hard to see why PolitiFact should fault Scott for this omission, especially when the subsidies drive overall costs up instead of bringing them down.  Insurance subsidies represent progressive partial free riding.

Though the insured pay more, they receive a "bigger swath of benefits"

PolitiFact tries to make this seem like a huge benefit, but it's kind of like getting an expensive Buick when all you really need is a Kia.  There's no more Kia.  The Buick is the new entry-level automobile.  And maybe the Buick has leather upholstery, but then again maybe you're a vegan (celibates paying for contraception and pregnancy insurance).  Again,. there's no reason why Scott should need to provide this detail.  He's giving reasons why he's not setting up an exchange.  His objections have to do with overall cost and the priorities of Floridians.  When everyone's driving a Buick, people are paying more for transportation even if Buick drops its prices down to wholesale.

Exchanges do help lower costs in an "apples to apples" comparison

To the extent that Gov. Scott's statement suggests that exchanges do nothing to encourage cost reductions, PolitiFact has a point.  Buick dealers can compete against each other to provide the lowest-cost Buick and that competition does have an effect, not to mention economies of scale.  But Scott emphasizes overall health care costs, so he is justified in keeping the emphasis on the overall increase in premiums.

"People purchasing their own health insurance comprise less than one-fifth of the market"

People who are not purchasing their own health insurance are not purchasing it through an exchange, so this point is irrelevant.  There's no reason for Scott to mention it, since he's giving reasons for not setting up a state exchange.  In fact, the smaller the share of the market, arguably the greater justification Scott has for not setting up an exchange.

PolitiFact routinely asserts that Scott leaves out important information.  PolitiFact routinely leaves out the justification for calling the information important.  Scott's omissions were of borderline relevance at most.

PolitiFact:

Scott said that the Congressional Budget Office said people would pay 10 percent more for policies on the exchange, "so about $2,100 more for a family." What he doesn’t say is that these policies will have to offer comprehensive coverage. So people will pay more, but they’re also get more benefits. Additionally, the federal government will offer subsidies to many of these people to cut the cost.

It’s also important to remember the CBO’s "apples-to-apples" comparison. According to the agency, people in the individual market will actually pay less for the required amount of benefits under the Affordable Care Act than they would for those same benefits under old policies.

We rate Scott’s statement Mostly False.

Note that while Scott emphasized overall medical costs to the state of Florida and its people, PolitiFact's objections all center around costs to the individual.  PolitiFact ignored Scott's central point and graded him according to a standard that failed to respect the context of his remarks.

The "Truth-O-Meter" ruling, as is so often the case, represents an absurdity.  PolitiFact defines "Mostly False" as a statement that "contains an element of truth but ignores critical facts that would give a different impression."  But Scott's statement does not simply contain an element of truth.  His statement is perfectly accurate and even takes the lower premium increase estimate from the CBO report.  None of PolitiFact's caveats alter the impression that a family paying for its own insurance faces a 10 percent hike, unless it shows that the CBO said the hike might end up at 13 percent instead.

This case points up again that despite PolitiFact's continued assertions that "words matter" it makes a great big exception for itself when it comes to defining the "Truth-O-Meter" grades.

Scott's statements were more truthful than PolitiFact's, using the same measure.


The grades:

Katie Sanders:  F
Angie Drobnic Holan:  F

This story reads like a PPACA apologetic, not like a fact check.  The PolitiFact team substituted its own point for Gov. Scott's point and graded Scott according to the result.  That's a wrong approach for fact checking, as PolitiFact admits in its statement of principles:

Context matters -- We examine the claim in the full context, the comments made before and after it, the question that prompted it, and the point the person was trying to make.

PolitiFact may think it grand that everyone in the exchange gets a good deal on a Buick, but that doesn't undermine Scott's point that getting everyone a Buick imposes a heavy burden in terms of cost.

Buick.com

Grading PolitiFact (Florida): Is U.S. Chamber of Commerce's Bill Nelson ad accurate?

Context matters -- We examine the claim in the full context, the comments made before and after it, the question that prompted it, and the point the person was trying to make.
--Principles of PolitiFact and the Truth-O-Meter

Hogwash.


The issue:

(clipped from PolitiFact.com)

The fact checkers:

Angie Drobnic Holan:  writer, researcher
Louis Jacobson:  researcher
Katie Sanders:  researcher
Aaron Sharockman:  editor


Analysis:

This story by PolitiFact Florida manifests that special type of journalistic incompetence that could easily double as deliberate campaign activity on behalf of the Democratic Party's senatorial candidate, Bill Nelson.

PolitiFact does provide the context of the ad, which gives the lie, directly or indirectly, to pretty much the entire PolitiFact analysis:

U.S. Chamber: "Obamacare will be a nightmare for Florida seniors. Did Bill Nelson consider the consequences when he cast a deciding vote for Obamacare?"

Nelson: "This legislation is gonna let folks that are happy with their insurance keep it …"

U.S. Chamber: "Wrong. 20 million people could lose their current coverage."

Nelson: "... including our senior citizens who are on Medicare."

U.S. Chamber: "But Senator, seniors will see $500 billion in Medicare cuts to fund Obamacare. Call Bill Nelson. Tell him to support the repeal of Obamacare."

It is pretty well established that it was not true of the ACA that folks who are happy with their insurance will necessarily have the opportunity to keep their existing insurance.  Even PolitiFact didn't swallow that line from President Obama.  Criticizing that same line from Sen. Nelson constitutes the immediate context of the ad.

PolitiFact focuses on a would-be broader context where the ad supposedly implies that 20 million Medicare beneficiaries will* lose their current insurance:

Here, we’re checking whether "20 million people could lose their current coverage," and whether those people are older Americans on Medicare as the ad strongly suggests.

Don't hold your breath waiting for PolitiFact to substantiate its claim that the ad "strongly suggests" that 20 million Medicare beneficiaries will lose their current coverage.  It never happens.  Instead, we get a series of statements that essentially repeat the charge without any supporting evidence:  "The ad makes it sound like 20 million seniors will be losing coverage," "The ad blurs these distinctions in a way that’s highly misleading," "Yet it seems like that’s the reasonable interpretation of the ad" and "The ad from the U.S. Chamber makes it sound like 20 million older Americans will lose coverage under the health care law."

Apparently since the ad opens with the claim that "Obamacare will be a nightmare for Florida seniors," PolitiFact assumes that some portion of the ad must support that statement.  But that simply isn't the case.  The ad follows up by showing Nelson making false statements about the health plan he supported and the ad questions whether Nelson considered the consequences of his vote.  That's fair game in politics.

Is the jump from the claim that ObamaCare is disastrous for Florida seniors to Nelson's ill-stated advocacy a proper justification for a "Pants on Fire" rating?  PolitiFact wants us to think so, and uses techniques that make the U.S. Chamber of Commerce ad look completely aboveboard by comparison.

Shenanigan A:

We read (CBO) the report, which analyzes the health care law of 2010, also known as the Affordable Care Act. We quickly realized the ad was mixing apples and oranges.

On the contrary, rather than mixing apples and oranges the ad uses the higher boundary of an estimate of those who will lose existing employer-provided coverage to represent the number of citizens overall who will lose their existing coverage.  Logically, the higher boundary on the loss of existing coverage for all Americans is higher than that for just those in the employer-provided market.  The claim that the ad mixes apples and oranges stands if PolitiFact demonstrates that the ad is saying that 20 million Medicare beneficiaries will lose their existing coverage.  PolitiFact never undertakes that demonstration.

Shenanigan B:

Even if the ad had provided proper context of employer-provided insurance, it’s still not exactly the case that 20 million people will lose coverage under the health insurance law.

The ad said "could lose," not "will lose."

Shenanigan C:

Second, some portion of that (20 million) number are people voluntarily switching to other, better coverage -- not being forced out of coverage against their will.

Ah, the old "conjecture as evidence" ploy.  "Are" suggests a fact in evidence.  But the consequences of the law foretold in the CBO report are not yet in evidence.  As chronicled in an earlier "Grading PolitiFact" entry, PolitiFact invented its evidence on this point.  Is it possible that a person will voluntarily leave employer-provided coverage for coverage under an exchange?  Sure, barely.  But subsidized exchange coverage under the health care reform act is not available to those forsaking employer-offered coverage.  Those doing so pay for their insurance out of their own pockets, and in addressing that point the CBO notes that consumers in the insurance market strongly tend to choose the less expensive option.  PolitiFact has an excellent record of ignoring that detail from the report.

Shenanigan D (bold emphasis added):

We contacted the Center for Medicare Advocacy, a nonprofit group that works with Medicare beneficiaries to educate them on the program and help them get access to care. We asked executive director Judith Stein if there was any scenario in which seniors would lose coverage under the new health care law.

"If they’re stating that 20 million people would lose Medicare because of the Affordable Care Act, that is simply not true. In fact, the health care law strengthens Medicare coverage," Stein said.

Note the leading nature of the question posed to Stein.  The question uses as its premise the supposition that the ad says seniors will lose insurance coverage, not that seniors will lose their current plan.  And for many seniors, the current plan is a Medicare Advantage plan.

From the Medicare's chief actuary, Richard Foster:

The new provisions will generally reduce MA rebates to plans and thereby result in less generous benefit packages. We estimate that in 2017, when the MA provisions will be fully phased in, enrollment in MA plans will be lower by about 50 percent (from its projected level of 14.8 million under the prior law to 7.4 million under the new law).

As with the decreased enrollment in employer-provided insurance, the abandonment of existing Medicare Advantage insurance plans will occur primarily because of price rationing.

PolitiFact would leave its readers none the wiser.

Now to evaluate the ad according to an alternative reasonable interpretation.

The ad doesn't support its claim that the health care reform bill will prove disastrous for Florida seniors.  Instead, it makes the case that Bill Nelson's advocacy for the reform bill was misplaced.  That is the meaning of the ad's question "Did Bill Nelson consider the consequences when he cast a deciding vote for Obamacare?"

To support the idea that Nelson's perception of the consequences was awry, the ad shows him making the debunked claim that those who like their current insurance plan will be able to keep that plan.  Nelson expands on that claim by specifically mentioning Medicare.  The response in the ad points to a Medicare "cut" that reallocates the funding toward ObamaCare.  A portion of that reduction to projected Medicare spending comes from the reduced Medicare Advantage rebates mentioned above by Medicare's chief actuary.

PolitiFact crashes into this problem again and again.  Fair interpretation requires charitable interpretation of every statement.  It is flatly improper for fact checkers to arbitrarily prefer one "reasonable" interpretation over another.  The claim that 20 million may lose existing insurance--the claim PolitiFact chose to check--is flatly true by the CBO report because the total number of Americans who may lose existing coverage cannot be less than the number of Americans who may lose employer-based coverage.  PolitiFact's suggestion that the ad implies that the full 20 million come from Medicare carries the appearance of mendacity.


The grades:

Angie Drobnic Holan:  F
Aaron Sharockman:  F

I'm not offering grades for those who merely contributed research.

The two listed above are journalists reporting badly.


*Update/Clarification 5/18/2012:   I wrote early in the post that PolitiFact says "the ad supposedly implies that 20 million Medicare beneficiaries will lose their current insurance."  That statement is accurate in the context of the the entire fact check but is not fully supported by the quotation immediately following.  I considered changing it but decided on an explanatory note instead.

PolitiProps: Obama's 12 judges

Credit where it's due:  The PolitiFact rating of President Obama regarding his claim of support from 12 judges for the constitutionality of health care reform seems quite fair.

I can see room within PolitiFact's grading system for anything from "Pants on Fire" to "Barely True."  PolitiFact aimed for the middle with a "False" rating.

An accurate grading, even if repeated regularly, obviously does not free PolitiFact from the charge of political bias.  But it does help serve as a reassurance that PolitiFact's journalists operate with the aim of doing their jobs fairly.

ObamaCare and The Rule of Waiver

I can't improve on Ed Morrissey's analysis from Hot Air regarding the Obama administration's issuing of ObamaCare compliance waivers:

The Rule of Law depends on an environment with clear regulation and unbiased enforcement.  From the start, ObamaCare lacked any clarity in regulation.  Congress filled the bill with the phrase “The Secretary shall determine” in place of establishing rules and regulations for the massive regulatory regime Congress created.  Now, the White House has added arbitrary enforcement to uncertain regulation and opaque processes.  This is not the Rule of Law, but the Whim of Autocracy.

Morrissey continues to emphasize--and I concur--that business thrives best in a predictable and favorable regulatory climate.

Contrary to the way it was advertised, ObamaCare has damaged the economy by increasing uncertainty.

And it's worth pointing out that the routine use of waivers provides one more avenue for exerting central control over the economy, albeit in a relatively small way in the context of the overall economy.

Grading PolitiFact (Florida): Dan Fanelli's ObamaCare ad

The ad:

(Still not sure why the videos fail to appear on the main page--click the title above or "Read more" below to see it)

The issue:

The fact checkers:

Amy Sherman: writer, researcher
Sergio Bustos:  editor

These two work for the Miami Herald, for what that's worth.

Analysis:

Obamanomics and the meaning of reduced medical costs

My fellow bloggers from the right have roundly panned the president's ideas on health care reform. And rightly so. I have one stupendously obvious contribution to that mound of criticism. One so obvious that it doesn't often warrant mention among the more elegant criticisms.

Health care spending accounts for a large portion of the gross national product.

The repeated aim of the Obama administration is to reduce health care spending. Ergo, it is a promise to reduce the size of one large segment of the U.S. economy.

Now, what specific benefits might accrue because of a reduction in health care spending? One is fairly obvious: Consumers get to spend the dollar saved from health care on another part of the economy. But for an overall benefit to the economy, that dollar must be spent on something more beneficial to the economy than health care spending.

I am not clear on any existing assurance that the dollar spent otherwise will result in economic improvement. Essentially, that dollar is taken away from medical profits, salaries, research or equipment. A number of those losses seem to add up to reduced quality of medical care--but that returns us to some of the more elegant criticisms of Obamanomics.

Aside from the above, only one potential benefit occurs to me: So long as the reduced costs are confined to government expenses, the reduced costs will put less of a drain on government funds, which in turn creates the potential for a reduced federal deficit. I say "potential" because of the propensity of government to spend whatever money it has (and then some) regardless of whether some of its programs shrink in cost.

The reduction in costs to the federal government also portends a decrease in the quality or amount of services. Can you say "rationing"? Sure. I knew you could.

I share the concerns of many that the Obama administration's plans, especially as augmented by an economically clueless Democratic leadership, will spell deep trouble for the United States in the future.