A long-running chain email claims that Medicare premiums are going to shoot up to $247 per month in 2014 because of the health care law. That’s not true no matter how many times this email is forwarded.
See our April 30 Ask FactCheck — “Realtors, the 3.8% ‘Sales Tax’ and $247 Medicare Premiums” — for more.
Stories by Lori Robertson
Managing Editor, FactCheck.org
Viral Claims, Part I
Contrary to what viral emails claim, there’s no 3.8 percent “sales tax” on homes in the federal health care law. The investment tax will affect few high-income earners.
See our April 30 Ask FactCheck — “Realtors, the 3.8% ‘Sales Tax’ and $247 Medicare Premiums” — for more.
Small Businesses and the Health Care Law
Is the Affordable Care Act “devastating to small businesses,” as some critics claim? We find such assertions are overblown. The law is actually beneficial to truly small companies.
See “GOP’s ‘Job-Killing’ Whopper, Again” (Feb. 21) for more on claims about the impact on small businesses.
Obama Misrepresents Ryan’s Plan
The president got a key point wrong when he attacked Rep. Paul Ryan’s plan for Medicare.
Read more about Obama’s claims in “Fall Preview: Obama vs. Romney (and Ryan),” April 6.
It’s a Job-Killer?
Claims that the health care law kills jobs are greatly exaggerated.
Read more about the claim in our Feb. 21 article, “GOP’s ‘Job-Killing’ Whopper, Again.”
The Contraception Conundrum
Is free contraception coverage revenue neutral, or does it increase insurance premiums? The evidence is conflicting and murky.
See our Feb. 24 article, “Cloudy Contraception Costs,” for more on this issue.
Massachusetts Health Care Overhaul
The Massachusetts health care law signed by then-Gov. Mitt Romney did not create a “government-run” system, as some critics have said. But Romney wrongly claims everyone under his law was covered by private insurance, ignoring his own expansion of Medicaid.
Read more in our Jan. 20 article, “South Carolina Smackdown.”
White House Spins Women’s Health
Republicans are right: The White House is greatly exaggerating when it says that “women, in particular,” benefit from a prevention fund that the House GOP proposes to repeal. The truth is that the fund in question wasn’t set up specifically for women’s health programs, and we could find no concrete evidence that it has paid anything to gender-specific health programs so far.
For example, the fund has paid for programs to discourage tobacco use, encourage physical fitness,
Stretching the Truth in Nebraska
Club for Growth Action is out with another attack ad on Republican Senate candidate Jon Bruning, this time stretching to paint him as a “big taxer.” Earlier this month, the group exaggerated Nebraska Attorney General Bruning’s spending record.
The latest ad says Bruning “once called for higher gas taxes and Social Security taxes.” But it doesn’t mention that he did so back in 1992 in an opinion piece in the University of Nebraska’s Daily Nebraskan,
Misleading on Premiums
Both the Republican National Committee and the Obama administration are making misleading claims about health insurance premium costs. An RNC ad falsely implies that the federal health care law is responsible for all of the $1,300 average increase in family coverage premiums last year. But at the same time, the Obama administration makes the misleading claim that families “could save up to $2,300” on health care costs per year in the future by buying insurance through exchanges called for by the law.