PolitiFact’s “Pants on Fire” emblem, which it only assigned to President Obama’s “if you like your prepare, you can maintain your plan” guarantee in 2013, 5 years soon after it rated that guarantee “True.”
On December 12, the self-appointed guardians of truth and justice at PolitiFact named President Obama’s infamous promise—that “if you like your overall health care plan, you can hold it”—its 2013 “Lie of the Yr.” An understandable choice. But in its post detailing why the President’s promise was a lie, PolitiFact neglected to mention a critical detail. In 2008, at a vital stage in the presidential campaign, PolitiFact rated the “keep your plan” guarantee as “True.” The whole episode, and PolitiFact’s misleading conduct throughout, tells us a lot about the troubled state of “fact-checking” journalism.
2008 PolitiFact: ‘We rate his statement True’
On October 9, 2008, Angie Drobnic Holan of PolitiFact published an post utilizing the site’s “Truth-O-Meter” to evaluate this declare: “Under Barack Obama’s overall health care proposal, ‘if you’ve received a health care plan that you like, you can keep it.’” The post assures us in its headline that “Obama’s program expands [the] current program,” and continues that “Obama is accurately describing his health care program here…It stays to be witnessed whether Obama’s strategy will really be in a position to achieve the price savings it promises for the overall health care program. But folks who want to hold their present insurance ought to be capable to do that under Obama’s prepare. His description of his plan is precise, and we fee his statement Real.”
As per PolitiFact’s typical M.O., Holan did not seek out out any skeptical health-policy authorities to suss out the veracity of Senator Obama’s signature claim. Alternatively, its sources integrated Jonathan Cohn, a passionate Obamacare supporter at The New Republic, and a variety of interviews and statements of Mr. Obama. Holan merely took the claim at face worth, dismissing as dishonest anybody who dared propose that Obama’s claim would be extremely hard to preserve. “His opponents have attacked his prepare as ‘government-run’ health care,” the scare-quotes all around “government run” noticeable to all.
PolitiFact’s pronouncements about Obamacare had been broadly repeated by pro-Democratic reporters and pundits, and had a meaningful impact on the outcome of the election. Certainly, in 2009, PolitiFact won the Pulitzer Prize for its coverage of the 2008 campaign.
2009 PolitiFact: ‘There’s no guarantee’
By the summer of 2009, with the White Residence safely in Democratic hands, Holan and PolitiFact evolved their evaluation of Obama’s promise. “On one particular level, Obama is proper,” Holan insisted in a new PolitiFact post, but now that “we finally have comprehensive payments to examine,” Holan located that Obamacare would “introduce new ways of regulating well being insurance coverage companies that will surely modify the present health care technique.” Surprise!
But in reality Senator Obama was very open during the 2008 campaign about his desire to “introduce new approaches of regulating overall health insurance coverage companies that would absolutely modify the current well being care program.” His 2008 strategy would need that all insurers cover everyone, regardless of pre-present conditions, one thing that each and every health wonk understands to be a transformative and disruptive advancement. It would require all ideas to cover a expensive set of essential positive aspects that would drive up the cost of insurance. It would repair the operating margins of overall health insurers, through the “medical loss ratio,” in a way that would drive up charges and modify rewards.
So it wasn’t surprising to any individual that the actual Obamacare bill, introduced in Congress, incorporated these really very same ideas. Except now, Holan and PolitiFact described the “keep your plan” declare as “Half True.” Their explanation? The proposed “public option” of a government-sponsored program may give employers an incentive to drop coverage into the public method. Holan continued to downplay the other provisions in the Obamacare bill.
“Until the legislation will get closer to a final stage,” wrote Holan, “it’s difficult to say how a lot of employers will probably opt to alter coverage. But clearly some alter is coming. It is not practical for Obama to make blanket statements that ‘you’ will not be able to ‘keep your well being care strategy.’ It seems like rhetoric intended to soothe folks that well being care reform will not be overly disruptive. But one particular of the factors of reform is to adjust the way overall health care functions right now. So we fee Obama’s statement Half True.”
Note that every single single statement in that paragraph was as true of Obama’s 2008 strategy as it was of the Obamacare bills of 2009. But PolitFact’s rating magically evolved from “True” to “Half Correct.”
2012 PolitiFact: CBO tasks program-dropping, but President still ‘Half True’
In the summer of 2012, after the Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of Obamacare’s personal mandate, PolitiFact was back at it yet again, rating as “Half True” the President’s “keep your plan” promise. This time, the write-up was written and researched by another PolitiFact writer, Louis Jacobson, and edited by Angie Drobnic Holan, who had been promoted by PolitiFact from her preceding reportorial function.
The 2012 write-up was precipitated by a March 2012 report from the Congressional Spending budget Office that projected that four million Americans would drop their employer-sponsored coverage by 2016 due to Obamacare, with numerous possessing to enroll in Obamacare-sponsored insurance coverage rather. Some of these alterations would be “involuntary,” wrote Jacobson, rendering false the “guarantee” that each and every American could keep his prepare.
But due to the fact the President, in accordance to PolitiFact, “does take pains to enable Americans to hold their wellness prepare if they want to continue to be on it,” the group maintained its “Half True” rating. The “does get pains” line is hardly objective reality-checking, but a lot more like subjective excuse-producing.
In 2012, Obamacare was a law, not simply a bill, and its dramatic restructuring of the wellness insurance coverage technique was now a statutory truth that was plain for anyone—whose eyes had been open—to see.
Without a doubt, in 2010, the Obama administration itself estimated that a vast majority of employer-sponsored overall health insurance plans would quickly be unlawful below Obamacare. If PolitiFact had spoken with anyone at Aetna or Humana or UnitedHealth, it would have realized about what the law would do to the insurance industry. But that would have essential real reporting.
2013 PolitiFact: It is the ‘Lie of the Year’
So that brings us back to the fall of 2013. As Obamacare’s battle station grew to become operational, and tens of hundreds of thousands of health programs grew to become unlawful, PolitiFact was caught with its flaming pants down. Louis Jacobson rapped Valerie Jarrett for tweeting that “nothing in Obamacare forces men and women out of their well being plans”—a declare Jacobson rated as “False,” even however PolitiFact had rated it as “True” and “Half True” ahead of.
On November four, Jacobson rated as “Pants on Fire” the President’s new claim that “what we stated was, you can hold [your prepare] if it hasn’t modified because the law passed.” Each pieces had been edited by Angie Drobnic Holan, who had initially granted PolitiFact’s seal of approval to Senator Obama’s 2008 promise. Holan delivered the coup de grâce, declaring as PolitiFact’s “Lie of the Year” the “keep your plan promise.”
“The guarantee was extremely hard to preserve,” says Holan in her December piece. Now she tells us. But none of the essential facts that produced that guarantee “impossible” in 2008 had modified by 2013. The President’s prepare had usually needed main disruption of the health insurance coverage market the Obamacare bill contained the important elements of that program the Obamacare law did as nicely. The only issue that had transformed was the actual very first-hand accounts of millions of Americans who were losing their plans now that Obamacare was reside.
PolitiFact neglects to mention its 2008 ‘True’ rating
The highlight of Holan’s 2013 “Lie of the Year” post was that it entirely ignored Holan’s own “True” rating of the “keep your plan” claim back in 2008. A sidebar to the report listed as “related rulings” Holan’s 2013 content articles about Jarrett and Obama, and Jacobson’s 2012 post rating the claim as “Half Correct.” The text of the article cites also the 2009 “Half True” report. But nowhere does the “Lie of the Year” piece even acknowledge that its writer when gave Obama’s guarantee its 100 % “True” seal of approval.
It is much more than a bit treasured for Holan—a self-appointed Arbiter of the Truth—to declare as a “Lie” a statement that she herself as soon as declared to be “True” without even acknowledging the reality that she had carried out so. She has no compunction, nor does her employer, in calling President Obama a liar, without calling focus to, allow alone reflecting on, the gaping flaws in her own reporting. If President Obama’s declare is PolitiFact’s “Lie of the 12 months,” so must be PolitiFact’s 2008 endorsement of that claim.
That we can’t count on PolitiFact to even admit it was wrong tells you every thing you need to have to know about the group. A single wag on Twitter after described PolitiFact as “60 % correct,” due to the fact “Politi” is 60 percent of the letters in “PolitiFact.” PolitiFact’s Obamacare flip-flop—coming right after two presidential elections in which the group came to Obama’s defense—tells you one, or both, of two issues: (one) PolitiFact doesn’t know what it’s carrying out when it comes to evaluating the truthfulness of claims concerning health policy and/or (2) PolitiFact bears a left-wing bias that sought to downplay unflattering aspects of the President’s well being-care program during election years.
PolitiFact’s pants are on fire
Certainly, the total enterprise of PolitiFact is darkened by the dishonesty at its quite core. The group routinely evaluates predictions about the future as “facts.” Something that has occurred in the previous is a reality. Something that will take place in the long term is open for debate—at least for those of us without having a souped-up DeLorean. PolitiFact hardly ever troubles itself with evaluating actual information, as an alternative considering itself a kind of super-objective consider tank that can omnisciently predict the long term.
There is nothing at all incorrect with making an attempt to assign realism to the predictions about the future that politicians make. But that’s not fact-checking. It’s prediction-checking. And that is why PolitiFact’s quite name is itself a Pants on Fire lie it should alternatively be referred to as “PolitiPrediction.” But that wouldn’t offer as considerably chance for self-righteous preening.
And there is previously a journalistic marketplace for prediction-checking: the robust local community of think tanks and policy analysts who have actual experience in the subjects they write about. PolitiFact is not a feel tank alternatively it is composed of ordinary reporters, who barely recognize the topics they compose about, and routinely flip to liberal and progressive policy analysts—but seldom conservatives—to buttress their forays into soothsaying.
PolitiFact is an embarrassment to the globe of fact-checking, let alone to the planet of prediction-checking to which it actually belongs. Their 2008 Pulitzer Prize—prominently talked about on every PolitiFact internet page—owes itself in part to the group’s lazy and inaccurate reporting on Obamacare. If PolitiFact have been intellectually truthful, it would acknowledge that it was undeserving of that prize, reflect on how its work has gone astray, and target in the potential on actual reality-checking as an alternative of prediction-checking.
Here’s my prediction: they won’t. And that is all you want to know about the epistemological legitimacy of PolitiFact.
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INVESTORS’ NOTE: The greatest publicly-traded gamers in Obamacare’s overall health insurance exchanges are Aetna (NYSE:AET), Humana (NYSE:HUM), Cigna (NYSE:CI), Molina (NYSE:MOH), WellPoint (NYSE:WLP), and Centene (NYSE:CNC), in order of the variety of uninsured exchange-eligible Americans for whom their programs are obtainable.
In 2008, PolitiFact"s 2013 "Lie Of The Year," That You Could Hold Your Overall health Program Below Obamacare, It Rated As "True"
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