Fact Check: A Last Look @ Healthcare Before the Supreme Court Ruling

“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.

Let’s start with the RNC ad, which was launched last week. It takes Obama to task for promising to lower the typical family’s premiums by $2,500, an optimistic claim we have questioned several times, ever since the soon-to-be president first made the promise on the campaign trail. But, the RNC says, “it didn’t happen.” That’s true, and it’s unknown whether it will ever happen.

Then, the RNC implies that the health care law is to blame for all of the increase in premiums from 2010 to 2011. The ad says, “The average cost of a family policy is up $1,300.” That’s the total increase in the average employer-sponsored premium for family plans from 2010 to 2011, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation’s annual survey. And that’s the total cost for both employers and employees — not $1,300 out of pocket for the average family. In fact, the Kaiser Family Foundation report said that the increase in what workers contribute wasn’t “a statistically significant increase over the 2010 values.”

Standard economic theory holds that even if the employers picked up the vast majority of the bump in premium costs, they passed that expense on to employees in the form of lower wages. So it’s fair to argue that families bear the full $1,300 cost increase one way or another. But was the health care law to blame for the rise in premiums? We looked into premium increases last October, and experts told us more generous coverage requirements in the law caused premiums to go up by 1 percent to 3 percent. All told, premiums went up 9 percent, the bulk of which was due to rising health care costs….”

Read more