During a phone interview with Fox News, Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump claimed that his companies “don’t use much Obamacare” just minutes after publicly stating that “all of [his] employees are having a tremendous problem with Obamacare.” The contradiction went unnoticed at Fox, which allowed the GOP nominee to peddle misinformation about the law’s supposed impending demise.
The Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare, was thrust into national headlines on Monday after the Obama administration confirmed double-digit premium increases on average for insurance plans sold on Obamacare’s online marketplace at Healthcare.gov for 2017. This will raise the average cost for a “Silver” plan, which is the benchmark that Obamacare subsidies are calculated for, to $3,552 annually, before subsidies are applied (the vast majority of enrollees receive substantial subsidies). As MSNBC’s Ali Velshi explained today, this premium level is consistent with the Congressional Budget Office’s 2009 analysis of future rates.
Trump made a series of false claims about the ACA during the interview that went unchecked by Fox anchor Bill Hemmer, including touting the benefits of repealing and replacing Obamacare (there is no replacement plan), calling the average figure for premium increases of 25 percent a “phony number,” praising the benefits of health savings accounts (they’re widely criticized by health experts as an insufficient replacement for insurance), and denouncing Obamacare for killing jobs (it doesn’t).
Perhaps most perplexing was Trump’s claim that he doesn’t “use much Obamacare” when numerous reporters confirmed that Trump claimed “all of my employees are having a tremendous problem with Obamacare” during a rally in Doral, Florida, just before the Fox interview.
Trump: “All of my employees are having a tremendous problem with Obamacare.”
— Reid J. Epstein (@reidepstein) October 25, 2016
Trump at his Doral property: “All of my employees are having a tremendous problem with obamacare” pic.twitter.com/5hA9raeguR
— Ashley Killough (@KilloughCNN) October 25, 2016
Trump in Doral: “Obamacare is blowing up.” “All of my employees are having a tremendous problem with Obamacare.”
— Patricia Mazzei (@PatriciaMazzei) October 25, 2016
While right-wing media and Trump tend to focus on exaggerating the troubles of the health insurance exchanges, those marketplaces represent one part of the ACA, which includes vital consumer protections and mechanisms to improve care quality while lowering costs. Trump’s flip-flop on whether or not he “uses” Obamacare is particularly baffling, since the Employer Shared Responsibility Provision of the ACA (also known as the employer mandate) “penalizes employers who either do not offer coverage or do not offer coverage which meets minimum value and affordability standards.” So either his employees do have “a tremendous problem with Obamacare,” which means he doesn’t provide health benefits for his employees since his businesses would qualify as “large employers,” or he doesn’t “use much Obamacare,” which still means his businesses do provide insurance and thus are complying with the law. Either way, Trump’s inconsistent claims about Obamacare and Fox’s decision to not push back on his plethora of misinformed claims about the ACA reveals their fundamental misunderstanding of the Affordable Care Act as a whole.
Watch the full interview from the October 25 edition of Fox News’ America’s Newsroom: