PolitiFact, and particularly PolitiFact North Carolina, have done a poor job reporting the issue of legal protections for persons with pre-existing conditions seeking health insurance.
A fact check from PolitiFact North Carolina made it sound like repeal of the Affordable Care Act could end “coverage” for people with pre-existing conditions. In fact, it would have ended the ACA’s particular protections for persons with pre-existing conditions, assuming legislators did not preserve those with new legislation. People with coverage of pre-existing conditions through group insurance, and that’s most non-elderly Americans, would not have lost that coverage as a consequence of repeal.
As of May 19, 2020, we could detect no attempt by PolitiFact’s to correct the error(s).
Note: Our email to PolitiFact contains an error where it says “Persons unaware of the way group insurance covers pre-existing conditions would be the least likely to be misled by the fact check.” It should have read “aware,” not “unaware.”
[Text of the complaint:]
Dear Truth-O-Meter,
Fact checks by PolitiFact North Carolina on protections for pre-existing conditions have produced a distorted picture of reality by ignoring via omission of the fact that group insurance has historically covered pre-existing conditions. Given that group insurance covers the bulk of the non-elderly U.S. population, fact checks omitting that information are committing a substantial error. Using language implying that pre-existing conditions simply will not be covered in the event the ACA is overturned compounds the problem.
This March 2, 2020 fact check by Paul Specht fails to mention that group insurance covered pre-existing conditions without the ACA.
Note what the fact check says:
If those repeal experts [sic] had been successful, people with pre-existing conditions could have been left without health care coverage.
Readers could easily interpret that as meaning repeal of the ACA would mean all people with pre-existing conditions would be left without private health insurance coverage. The very limited use of qualifying language (”could”) biases the presentation. Using “many people” might have helped, for example.
The March 2 fact check also states:
PolitiFact has repeatedly determined that a vote to repeal the ACA in full would have stripped coverage for people with pre-existing conditions.
That simply isn’t true. Repealing the ACA would strip the ACA’s assurances of guaranteed issue, but it would not broadly strip insurance coverage for people with pre-existing conditions. It is likely that people with group insurance through their employer would be unaffected until they end up changing insurance, particularly by shopping the individual market. But that isn’t the same as stripping their existing coverage.
An October 2018 fact check by PolitiFact North Carolina similarly omits mention of how group insurance has historically covered pre-existing conditions. The 2018 fact check largely avoids the misleading statements in the 2020 fact check, but still promotes an exaggerated view of the number of people affected by a removal of the ACA’s particular set of protections. Persons unaware of the way group insurance covers pre-existing conditions would be the least likely to be misled by the fact check.
This problem may be widespread in PolitiFact’s fact checks touching the issue of guaranteed issue for pre-existing conditions. Given the importance fact-checkers place on ensuring the inclusion of relevant information, we hope PoliitFact will act to correct any such problems in its reporting.
Thanks for reading.