Our old friends the Kochs are back with more debunkable Obamacare ads, pouring more money down the drain in Senate races where—for all their millions—they're just not getting much purchase. But it seems like they've abandoned the
"horror stories" that have earned them so many Pinocchios in favor of the more generic ad like the one above, attacking Democratic Rep. Gary Peters in the Michigan race. It's generic, but that doesn't mean its claims aren't
bullshit, as Simon Maloy so succinctly put it.
AFP’s ad attacks Peters by focusing on hardships faced by women in the state. "Michigan women understand: it's tough to make ends meet," the ad starts out. Peters' support for the Affordable Care Act forms the crux of the attack, as the ad claims that the ACA is responsible for "driving up our health premiums by nearly 40 percent." […]
If you squint hard enough you’ll see that AFP attributed the claim to an April 7 Forbes.com article. That article was actually reporting the results of a Morgan Stanley survey of 148 insurance brokers nationwide, which "points to significant acceleration in small group & individual rate increases." For Michigan, the increase was pegged at 36 percent.
If you look at the state-by-state data in that survey, you'll see that Morgan Stanley arrived at their number for Michigan based on responses from six insurance brokers. I’ll repeat that: they arrived at a statewide estimate on how much insurance premiums had risen after talking to SIX brokers.
What's more, Maloy reports, the survey AFP uses for the ad only looked at the individual and small group market, which represents about 40 percent of the insurance sold in Michigan. So it doesn't even apply to the 60 percent majority of insured people in the state, who have their coverage through their workplace. Six brokers say premiums are rising for 40 percent of the people with insurance, and Obamacare is causing the whole state to go broke!
The Kochs may have abandoned the personal Obamacare horror story as an ad tactic, but that doesn't mean they've abandoned making shit up.
