{"id":19062,"date":"2013-10-04T12:05:54","date_gmt":"2013-10-04T16:05:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/?p=19062"},"modified":"2013-10-04T12:05:54","modified_gmt":"2013-10-04T16:05:54","slug":"california%e2%80%99s-obamacare-exchange-can%e2%80%99t-tell-the-truth","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/19062\/california%e2%80%99s-obamacare-exchange-can%e2%80%99t-tell-the-truth\/","title":{"rendered":"California\u2019s Obamacare Exchange Can\u2019t Tell the Truth"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Disfiguring the truth seems to be one of the primary skill sets at Covered California, the state\u2019s Obamacare-aligned insurance exchange.<\/p>\n<p>When the online platform launched on Tuesday, it <a href=\"http:\/\/www.latimes.com\/business\/money\/la-fi-mo-california-health-exchange-glitches-20131001,0,7108713.story \" target=\"_blank\">erroneously stated<\/a> receiving 5 million hits. A day later, that number was revised down to 645,000.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cSomeone misspoke and thought it was indeed 5 million hits. That was incorrect,\u201d said a Covered California spokesman.<\/p>\n<p>This isn\u2019t the first time the Golden State\u2019s Obamacare exchange has been caught misstating the truth.<\/p>\n<p>Earlier this year it <a href=\"http:\/\/www.bloomberg.com\/news\/2013-05-24\/california-fudges-the-math-on-obamacare.html \" target=\"_blank\">misleadingly announced<\/a> that individual insurance premiums in 2014 would be lower than they are today. The news was quickly circulated as a refutation of the criticism that Obamacare\u2019s heightened coverage requirements will necessarily result in more expensive plans.<\/p>\n<p>But Covered California\u2019s own press release showed that the exchange was comparing apples to oranges. Instead of comparing individual insurance rates from 2013 to 2014, it compared small business rates from 2013 to individual rates in 2014. This sleight-of-hand had the effect of creating a more favorable (i.e. higher) baseline from which to compare Obamacare\u2019s higher individual rates.<\/p>\n<p>In other words, it was a distortion meant to persuade people that Obamacare does the opposite of what it actually did.<\/p>\n<p>And now Covered California is issuing \u201cincorrect\u201d opening day numbers that artificially inflate its popularity.<\/p>\n<p>Call me a cynic, but I think I see a pattern here\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Disfiguring the truth seems to be one of the primary skill sets at Covered California, the state\u2019s Obamacare-aligned insurance exchange. When the online platform launched on Tuesday, it erroneously stated receiving 5 million hits. A day later, that number was revised down to 645,000. \u201cSomeone misspoke and thought it was indeed 5 million hits. That [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[299,3007,1829,35,4160],"class_list":["post-19062","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-posts","tag-california","tag-exchange","tag-insurance","tag-obamacare","tag-premium"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19062","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19062"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19062\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19072,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19062\/revisions\/19072"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19062"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19062"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19062"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}